Richard Thompson Quotes About Songs

Quotes about: Songs

• I think you can refine what you do, and become more consistent. And you write better songs that have a better shape and a better feeling. You evolve into and out of things, and go through stages, but, ultimately, you do improve.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Writing, Thinking

• I think it's absolutely possible to write a song and go somewhere where no one's been before, uncharted territory. In terms of content, I see limitations where there should be none. I know there are things I wouldn't write about, but that shouldn't be the case. You should be able to make a song out of anything, out of any situation.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Writing, Thinking

• I just like to entertain myself by sitting down and writing songs.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Writing, Down And

• I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Who I Am, People

• I try to make songs visual and tactile to kind of put you into the action.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Trying, Action

  Interview with Andrew Ford, www.abc.net.au. April 24, 2004.

• As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Writing, Experience

• It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Fun, Enjoyable

• I don't really know how writing process happens, how these songs are arrived at. One of the things I like about the writing process is, I don't necessarily know where it's going, and even if I think I know where it's going, it'll turn out different. I find that exciting and rewarding.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• An audience will let you know if a song communicates. If you see them kind of falling asleep during the song, or if they clap at the end of a song, then they're telling you something about the song. But you can have a good song that doesn't communicate. Perhaps that isn't a song that you can sing to people; perhaps that's a song that you sing to yourself. And some songs are maybe for a small audience, and some songs are for a wide audience. But the audience will let you know pretty quickly.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Fall, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If you're up there performing a song for the first time, it's as if you're hearing it through their ears. You become acutely self-conscious of the song in performance, so that's a good thing before recording. But I like to have some surprises for the audience; I don't want the audience to know everything that's going to be on the record, because these days, with the Internet, people become avid collectors of pre-knowledge.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, People, Surprise

  Source: www.avclub.com

• People want to be the first with the record, they want to be the first to know which songs are on the record, all that kind of stuff. So I like to just stall them a bit. Personally, I love the idea of an album that's completely new, that no one's heard any free downloads, any pre-record releases, all that kind of stuff, and nothing's been played on the radio. Totally virgin, you know, a sealed record. That's my ideal, but it's very hard to get anybody else to agree to do that.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, People, Kind

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Hands, Three

• I think there are shades of political songs; some are more subtle and can be more effective for being subtle, for being more metaphorical. I've written a lot of songs like that, where it's not really clear if it's a war song or a relationship song. The metaphor can be the most powerful thing of all, but sometimes you have to speak more clearly to more people, and I think this is one of those times.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Powerful, War

  Source: www.avclub.com

• It's amazing what some people read into songs.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, People

• If you're up on a stage, naked and solo and singing songs to people, there's not much place to hide, so you may as well confess what you want to confess and say what you want to say, whatever that is. Some songs just turn out as being more about me, and some are more through the eyes of other people, or third-person descriptions of people.

  Richard Thompson

  Song, Eye, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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