Leo Sayer Quotes

I get a lot of joy out of covering other people's songs, and, at my best, I think I bring something a little new to a lot of them.

I think if you're going to cover a song, you should definitely take it apart and put it back together as if you wrote it. I don't think you should sing it the same way that the artist sang it - that's kind of pointless.

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.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

Even though other people wrote my songs I put my stamp on them. I have a connection, but there is no truer connection than an artists and their own song.

I can think of only two or three songs out of hundreds I've recorded that I performed as originally written. I like to become intimate with the material and change it to suit me.

I'm really not a songwriter, so if I hear a song, I feel it and like it, I'll do it. But I'll make it the way I want to hear it.

If a song feels good to me, it's not very difficult to make it my own.

I try and take it for what it is, and I'm very at peace with the fact that when I'm done with the songs, they don't belong to me anymore. They belong to the listeners.

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.

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 is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. 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.

Regardless of who originally made it popular, any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

As I've matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it's out there, it's mine.

Musicians own music because music owns them.

I'm not like other writers. I'm not hung up on using my own songs. In fact, my sister Bunny always tells me I sing other people's songs better than my own. She says I loosen up and give the songs a different feel.

I'm always flattered and honored when people cover my music or sing my songs, no matter where it is.

I trained myself by doing other people's songs in clubs way back when. And so I have no pride about doing covers. I love it. And being a song interpreter, to me, is just as important as, you know, putting your own thing out there. It's all about the soul - where the soul comes from.

I accept all of the music that I wrote.

That's all I ever do, just try and do the best I can and cater to the song, cater to the music.

My appeal to the composers, whoever touches an old classic, will only be this much: take it up only if you can express it your way, too; work hard with the writers; make them see your new vision for the song; change the lyrics, yet, keep the soul of the original song intact.

You're never going to improve on a Michael Jackson song if you cover it.

It's a different kind of satisfaction, different kind of enjoyment than making your own songs, to remake someone else's song that you really like.

I'm not interested in being the producer of somebody else's song.