Music Meaning Quotes

I think it's always interesting how music means different things to different people, and people who overthink it are looking to in some ways show off with music, versus people who just respond to a song and decide to sing it.

So if somebody writes a song that appears to have some meaning then everybody thinks that it's a really heavy song.

I always try to write about something that's actually happened or it doesn't always have to have happened to me, but it has to have happened at some point. So every single lyric that you hear comes from some kind of story that I've come across in my life. I like to think that that maybe helps me mean it a bit more and if you don't mean it, it ceases to be soul music.

Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning something else to them.

My aim is for every song to have a purpose - for you to be able to say, 'This song is about this.' But love and heartbreak are some of the most abstract subjects.

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.

Maybe this is a made-up belief to preserve myself, but I do believe that everyone has a purpose, and my purpose is to put out music that means something.

I know not every song has to be a powerful message.

That's my favorite part about songwriting, the way you write a song, and someone else might hear it a different way.

I think that music, being an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does express just what is happening - the whole of human experience at the particular time that it is being expressed.

I try not to say exactly what songs are about sometimes, because I feel like it ruins it for people.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it's not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they're totally one and the same. I'm always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

My music is a personal thing, and I feel like if I talk too much about the songs, or if there's too much of my personal life out there, it ruins it.

Whether it's an inspiring song or whether it's an entertaining song - whatever it might be about it - I just want people to feel the emotion that I put into it because I think emotion... is everything.

I like working with sound; sound and rhythm. I like the abstract more than "What does that mean?" Nobody ever says to you, "Why did you use a harmonium?" Or "What is that ringing sound that occurs here?" The questions are always "What does that song mean?" or "What were you trying to say here?"

Since I write the lyrics, I don't want to be pigeonholed into a person who's out there preaching these songs. If you read the lyrics, there isn't a story being set up for you. You have to use your imagination to get the best out of the songs - if you choose to do that.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

I feel that I have to say something in a song and that it's not just enough to lay down the music.

Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.

I do have a big problem with the idea of music as a form of communication unless it's political - and that's where it's tricky because a lot of music is political, even if it's not overtly so. But my music isn't that; it's about a feeling.

It's fun having songs about parties and gigolos, but I really wanted to use my music as a form of art. Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think, and I wanted to do that with this song.

And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one.

My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery.