Tom Jones Quotes

'If You Could Read My Mind' is a different experience every time I sing it. It's just that kind of a song.

I think that my sensitivity to music has actually deepened and expanded as I've gotten older. You add more life experience.

Whatever meaning 'Annie's Song' had for me on a personal level, there was also a larger context. It could just as easily have been about love for a brother. Or a father. Or a friend. It could just as easily have been a prayer.

I say, as a singer grows older, his conception grows a little deeper, because he lives life and he understands what he is trying to say a little more. And I think this gives. If a singer tries to find out what's happening in life, it gives him a better insight on telling the story of the song he is trying to sing.

I'd rather people interpret the songs and get whatever they can out of them instead of thinking about me crying in a room with a guitar.

I've definitely read interviews with people where they've explained exactly what they wrote something about and I've been like: "Oh no, I was thinking that was a really beautiful love song or a really sad thing."

My family life, my adoption - it could be related to the songs, but I think the songs are deeper than that. They're not just about this experience.

I think it's important to be able to write stuff that's personal to you and stuff that you'll really be able to understand what you're singing about and be able to truly sing it. Because if you're singing a song that someone's written for you and you really can't relate to it, it's hard to sing that song.

When someone tells me what he or she was doing the first time they heard a song of mine, then I've done a good job. If my song becomes about your life, then I'm successful.

A good song to one person could just be something mediocre to somebody else. It's always strange thinking about how songs connect with people.

The beauty of Billie Holiday is that she gave every singer after her the license to interpret and perform music in ways that were unique to each of us. Her uniqueness was very much a part of the way she sang the songs, the story she wanted to tell through the songs. I didn't really have a full understanding of Billie until I left home -- until I'd lived a little, shall we say. At different seasons of my life, when I'd sing her songs or listen to her albums, I'd hear things I didn't hear before. Wherever you are in life, you'll hear different things in her songs.

You really do kind of learn a lot about a person when you watch and listen to the songs that mean something to them.

People should be free to take whatever they want from music and I think that over time I realized that different people always find different things in my songs, which is really good.

I think there's thousands of good songs in the world - the songs that we can all sing along to, songs that are just so catchy they end up being in your head. But I think a great song is something that emotionally engages with you and connects with you.

I never wanted to grow a thicker skin; I felt a real sense of pride in my thin skin, and in a weird way, I still do, because it's my thin skin that allows me to empathize with other people. It's the thing that allows me to create vulnerable art. It's the thing that allows me to create other feelings and make songs that actually grab people and touch people. I feel like I've spent my life fighting that thicker skin because I don't want to become an embittered asshole.

I think people pick up on that. You use personal stuff and mix it all in - I definitely pull on that stuff in my acting.

Some people think that acting's about being somebody else and I don't. I think this is how I would be given the same circumstances. And I do it for my own enjoyment.

Songs are like myths. Myths are useful because they allow you to cast yourself and your life and your own experience. And for some people, 'Fire and Rain' speaks to them in that way.

I don't really like over-explaining the songs. Everyone constantly asks what the songs are about, and I think the thing is that the songs definitely all have stories in them; it's just nice to let people decide what they are. I think it's important that people hear it themselves rather than having me annotate it.

Anything that happens after I write a song...that's fine with me. It's up to the listener to read into it what they need from it. And that's part of the reason I write like I do, so I can leave the holes in the right places so people can say, 'Yeah, that happened to me,' and they're able to have their own little fantasy about it.

I've had a lot of people come up to me after shows and tell me that "Dollhouse" really helped them with whatever they were going through with their families. I thought that was really amazing, that it could mean one thing for me but another thing for someone else.

I think intimacy is a word that's used more physically than it needs to be. There are times in your life, sometimes it's when you fall in love with someone and sometimes it's when someone saves your life.

Even at the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.

We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music

I picked songs that I've been singing my whole life that stuck with me. I tried to pick stuff that was a variety. And I think the same way I always imagine that people are going to play the record at their house and I imagine them doing stuff with music on, like the way I am.