John Betjeman Quotes

I come from the performance world, but the idea of a worship song is different. It's useful music.

It's part of what I do at my piano - the hymns. And then I write.

For four years, my mum allowed only church music in the house.

Gospel artists are messengers; they are vessels of a message.

I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.

But nowadays hymns are the norm, because people don't have much else to sing.

There are a lot of bad worship songs, in my opinion, but there are a lot of good ones, too.

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

Music had always been the handmaid of the Roman liturgy.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

I've done gospel songs on every album.

I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.

If you're going to write a song, try to get together with a collaborator because it's better to write with collaborators.

I used to think God only liked organ music.

I love singing devotional songs, in whatever language.

The idea of music coming from the Church is not new.

I listen to a lot of old-school worship music.

I really don't have a method. I gravitate towards the organic/acoustic, but I still often complete songs musically before attempting to find the lyric.

It is not hard to compose but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table. . . So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them.

I'm a guitar player. Actually, I think of myself as a songwriter/rhythm-guitar player.

I never stopped writing music, I just stopped writing songs. I've been writing music continually ever since the last album of original tunes, "River Of Dreams" in '93.

I knew a lot of chords, but they weren't the chords that came with the melody that came with the idea I had for the song. Melodies are simple things. If you see a train wreck, there's a melody. If you see a little daisy blowing in the breeze, there's a melody.

I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there.

...hymns have been a powerful instrument of God to draw people closer to His Word and the saving riches therein.

I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.