Musical Narratives Quotes

So that I saw music as a way of documenting realities from the urban cities of Latin America.

I don't listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff. It's all quite dramatic and atmospheric. You'd have an entire story in song. I never listen to, like, white music - I couldn't sing you a Zeppelin or Floyd song.

I think to me, all songs are stories.

I think I'm different from a lot of singer-songwriters because some of my favorite singer-songwriters told stories. Like John Prine.

On the records that I grew up with and loved, every song was unique - it's almost as if you had a different journey every time - and the drums were big part of that story.

I've never been passionate about just music, I've never seen myself going into music in that sense. My love for music has always been connected to the stories told through music, which is why I was drawn to theater and why I think 'Glee' is so powerful.

I am not against songs in films. We come from an oral tradition of storytelling. I have grown up listening to epics in oral rendition and oral rendition always had music.

My first album, 'Englaborn,' was based on music originally written for the theatre. My solo albums, like 'IBM 1401, a User's Manual' and 'Fordlandia,' have also had narratives attached to them.

For me, growing-up music was always about telling stories.

Listening to the stories told in jazz music and how those artists expressed their truths about the times and what they were dealing with is what struck me the most.

What I really like to do with my music is these concept stories, and I always like to have some life philosophies in the lyrics.

Irish music in the local pubs was my first exposure to musical expression, and I feel like Irish music is very close to musical theater because it is always telling a story.

It's my responsibility as a singer-songwriter to report the news.

I didn't know folk music growing up, no. It's something I've come to study, really, because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication, the traveling storyteller, the bard, the minstrels.

With some songs, I have written narratives or I've tried to carry it through, but generally the things that were more genius, as far as I was concerned, were not that.

I grew up with Western films, and I always wondered why Bollywood never made films like that. Why do we always have to break into song?

It seems like on every record we have this big, epic thing like 'Rosetta,' 'Wings For Marie' or 'Lateralus.'

Before anything else, my favorite thing as a fan of music was to make up my own story as to what it means.

Sometimes I look at music as like movies. And so I feel like you can have your comedies, and you can have your dramas, and you can have your romances or whatever.

Some of my favorite films are musicals, like 'Walk the Line,' 'The Rose' and 'Lady Sings the Blues.' I just love the way the music and the story fuel each other.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it's a better way of telling the stories.