James Taylor Quotes

Great classic music that I've been turned on to has not only inspired and influenced me, but it has had an effect on my songwriting.

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.

I try to steal something from the great singers. Of course, I don't want to imitate their sound, but I try to do a sort of compromise.

I am a big Beatles fan. And, you know, unbeknownst to anyone, I used to be one. But I have no problems of putting titles and lines from other songs in my songs, because they're great lines and great titles.

Anyone in the arts has had an experience of seeing someone who they related to doing something and thinking, 'I could do that.' If you have one generation where you force its hand a bit, then the next one fills in the gaps, because it's seen an example of what can be done.

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

It's a great honor when somebody takes your song and does something different with it. That's what music is all about: to constantly change what somebody else has done.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

Some of the greatest artists did their best work when they got political.

I don't know if I could write songs if it wasn't for the female race, to be honest with you.

Being on the road is a great habitat for creating new music because there's so many different experiences.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!

Some songs depend heavily on the character, but, for the most part, a great song begs for reinterpretation every time it is sung, even when in character.

Music is a really great creative tool for me, for different roles.

Great music was written by the great geniuses, and you want to do it justice.

There's so many great songs already written, it's kind of really wonderful you don't have to write your own.

Lauryn Hill might have cursed a couple of times in her music, and Missy Elliot definitely just doesn't care. I'm really more inspired by their creativity more so than just the cursing. I'm really impressed by clean music.

I genuinely find the most meaningful thing I do is to make music, but also to absorb some sort of creativity.

There's a lot of music at my fingertips that I can be influenced by. And just because I play a horn, I don't need to sound, or try to capture, what was happening before me. I can just respect it and learn from it.

Whoever best serves the song is going to be served by the song.

Usually when a song comes to me, I don't ask a lot of questions; I hear something, and I just let it out in song. It's like making a salad. Everything I hear, and everything I am, I mix together in a different way in each song.

The most valiant thing you can do as an artist is inspire someone else to be creative.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire, what you like to listen to in music. What do you like to look at in architecture? Try to make a poem that has some of those qualities.

I'm inspired to do music. I really can't stop unless I stop being inspired.