Dan Hill Quotes

Most of my friends in Nashville - almost all of them - seem to have had hits in the '70s, either as artists or songwriters or producers.

It's really hard to write personal songs. I'm not good at writing ditties because as far as writing hit songs that you pitch to the national artist, I just don't write that way.

I don't believe in the philosophy of stumbling across hit records.

If you can't handle the responsibility of a hit single, don't write one.

After two years in the songwriting world, I wrote 'All About That Bass.' L.A. Reid heard it and signed me as an artist.

Berry Gordy turned his house into a studio and discovered over 30 acts in the city. And we're famous all over the world.

Good new songs are the backbone of the music industry. There isn't an artist out there who could survive without hit songs.

There's the famous thing that the A&R man from the record company is supposed to do: He's supposed to come into the studio and listen to the songs you've been recording and then say, 'Guys, I don't hear any singles.' And then everybody falls into a terrible depression because you have to write one.

Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.

I live in L.A., and whenever I get together with anybody to write, everybody is obsessed and fearful and wants to write a hit for everyone else. They wanna write a hit for Rihanna; they wanna write a hit for Katy Perry.

I've watched songwriters, writers, producers, even artists that I've written hits for come and go. But to the world, it looked like Justin Bieber was my first success.

I had a lot of songs which, I felt, if they come in an album, they can become bigger hits than in films.

The truth is, that's what we moved to Nashville to do - to learn how to write hit songs. We weren't necessarily trying to get on college radio. We're trying for mass appeal.

The only way to have longevity is to have good songs.

I don't have a long history of hit singles of my own. I had a few, and I had a little hot streak in the '70s, but I've had a lot of success producing other people.

I got about 6037 songs I wrote myself and I'm trying to get them on the market and I just wish people could hear them and stuff but they'll do pretty good.

So there was a way for you to get promoted and survive as an artist without worrying about AM radio hits.

We call 'Ain't No Mountain' the golden egg that landed us at Motown.

The whole industry evolves around a great song.

It is never easy for anyone to have success in music.

I don't think people really understood what I did. And you know, in my book, 'A Helluva High Note' deals with my back story, that I was a songwriter, that I spent years trying to hone my craft and being rejected and then finally becoming a successful songwriter, record executive and publisher.

Mike Campbell and Don Henley and I wrote 'The Heart of the Matter,' which was a huge hit for Don.

I'm gonna sing, and I'm going to make me a lot of money.

It only took me six months to get a record deal, but it took me 20 years to have a hit.

I often thought that if I had been working with Mark James at American Studios, I would have had a pop hit before I ever moved out of Memphis. But that didn't happen.