Richard Marx Quotes

We've all had that experience where we hear a song that we've liked for many years, and we finally hear what the writer tells us what it's about, and you're often disappointed.

My favorite song is called 'Reachout.' There are so many different stories told in that song. I think anyone who listens to it will gather a different meaning, but each answer is true. I also like the sound of it, period - there are a lot of classical influences.

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own.

Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.

It's amazing what some people read into songs.

It is a very serious consideration for a lyricist to step in there and suggest the meaning to a song. The music is speaking for itself.

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.

Not follow me but follow the lyrics.

I don't really like to explain my songs.

And I like to interpret music. So I think it's all interpretive.

I tend to explain my songs.

When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.

But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.

I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.

I love when people get songs wrong. I love when people take something from a song that's totally not what I intended!

Some people try and tell you what the songs are about and it bores me to death.

A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really.

You can say what you think music is, but the only way it really is, is how people experience it.

Nobody talks about music as having intrinsic meaning, how it engages the mind.

I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway.

The songs are about things that we were thinking and we wrote 'em down, and when you listen to 'em, whatever you think it's about... THAT'S what it's about!

Lyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.

You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly.