Tony Bennett Quotes

When I find a cover song that I like, I'll work away at it until I kind of believe that I wrote it.

Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension.

It's a different process for me, but it's really cool to hear someone else singing the song that you wrote.

You have to connect with a song, and when you write it, that connection is already there. It's your baby; your passion is in that song.

When you've written a song, sometimes it's really hard to wrap your brain around what somebody else is doing, or maybe the way that they see the song.

I try to tell the story about the song with the believability that I've lived it myself and I understand what it's all about.

Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.

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 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.

[A]s soon as you try and take a song from your mind into piano and voice and into the real world, something gets lost and it's like a moment where, in that moment you forget how it was and it's this new way. And then when you make a record, even those ideas that you had, then those get all turned and changed. So in the end, I think, it just becomes it's own thing and really I think a song could be recorded a million different ways and so what my records are, it just happened like that, but it's not like, this is how I planned it from the very beginning because I have no idea, I can't remember.

People get out of music what they want to get out of it, and all I try to do is do the same thing.

What I like doing is writing and recording and much more on the, I guess, the - on that creative level. It's fun interpreting songs and all that, but I wouldn't like it as a living.

I never feel that I have to adopt a character. It's more the way I choose to present the music and that's always based on what is right for the song.

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.

Of all the albums I've made, I still don't feel like I've made the perfect album. I've had ones that touch on this, and others that touch on that, but never one that's just perfect and fully relevant. I don't know if I'll ever make it, but I'm certainly trying every day.

I'm always proud and pleased when people do my songs. It gives me pleasure that they even attempt them, because a lot of my songs aren't that doable.

All Patsy Cline had to do was sing somebody else’s song and her version would outsell theirs because it would be so good!

If you're recording the song on your four-track in your kitchen, when you finished writing the song, you're recording, and it's cool, and honor that. And maybe that's the version that should be released. And if you're recording the song again, it shouldn't be because there's a version you love that you're chasing. It should be because "You know what? I made a recording, but I don't love it emotionally." So, okay, then record again. And be in it and take advantage of the buzz and energy of "I'm getting to record right now!" It's such a beautiful and cool privilege.

An artist must find his expression closely linked to his individual experience or else follow in the old grooves resulting in lifeless forms.

I never sing a song more than twice because my fear of waning excitement for a piece is part of my troubles. I so rely on vibe, energy and emotions that the technical part occurs to me last.

Sometimes performing someone else's song is more difficult than writing your own.

I hate not understanding the words, because it kind of squashes the song. It shrinks the visual landscape that you've made for the sounds. And, all of a sudden, the content eclipses things.

You can't lose the essence of a song. I try to enhance it more than anything else.

At the audition, your assignment is to find something new in the song. Something you've never noticed before. A breath carried over, a thought that ties the whole thing together. Then take the risk and do it.

I try to project not only a song but a personality.