song familiarity Quotes

You shouldn't even be in a band if you can't play Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away.

I've been doing that song ["Live Wire"] on my own for years, so no, I'm not worried about [high notes] at all.

By the age of 15, I knew over 40 Hank Williams songs.

If you are a cabaret artist and you are mostly singing other people's songs, you're asking them to rethink a song, listen to it in a different way. The most impact you can have while asking them to re-listen to a song is if it's a song they know very well.

I think people are getting into these 'Empire' songs because of the emotional investment they have in the characters. You kind of feel like you know the songs already because you just watched them play out in front of you with these characters.

I'm really terrible at math, so I won't even attempt to do ratios and percentages, but all I know is that there's a lot of new songs that no-one has heard yet, and that there's a lot of old songs that some very, very super hardcore fans have heard for sure - there are people that have been coming and seeing me play in bars in like 2002, and there are songs that those people heard.

I'd love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.

I think I had kind of an advantage. When I was growing up, my dad had just got out of jail and he had a great record collection. He had - it was all - these were the songs. So I heard a lot of these songs, like, my whole life, so for me it was easy. I already knew what I was going to sing.

When you play the bars, you pay your dues. It does matter that you know those things [songs]. And the great thing for me, too, is that I draw on that stuff as influences. It's also stuff that you put in the tank that you pull from to make records.

Lots of these songs I hadn't performed, but I've always wanted to. These are songs that I wanted to get in my wheelhouse. I sang them over and over and over and over again. Of course, I've fallen in love with them all.

I was surrounded by music in my family, surrounded by people who sang songs - every single person I knew as a child growing up had one, two, three songs they knew from start to finish.

Sometimes when a record's done, I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cause I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live, and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record.

My mom had a tape of Patsy Cline's greatest hits, and whenever we were in the car, she would put it on, and it got to the point where I knew all the words to every one of the songs, and I knew what order they came in on the tape.

We'll go out and we'll be playing in front of 15,000 people and say, 'Hey, we're going to do three new songs from something we just recorded' and 5,000 people get up and go get a hot dog and a beer and they don't come back until they hear the opening strings of 'The Joker' or 'Fly Like an Eagle.'

It is hard to play Blue Suede Shoes. I know everyone has heard it 10 million times, and that makes it even harder to play it, but there's a very laid back tempo on that. I was surprised at how slow it really was.

If you click on MTV, it's the same 10 bands and the same 10 songs, and it gets so old. Kids are looking for something besides what they get on the radio.

I know all the words to 'I'm on a Boat.'

People want you to play the songs they know. I try not to reflect too much, and I don't really like to focus too much on myself.

Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.

I'm hoping that when people hear a live Dawes song on YouTube or at a show and then they get that studio version, hopefully they're excited, rather than saying, "Oh man, I wanted completely new material I've never heard before."

In the past, I'd sort of know before Ozzy sang something, what he was going to sing. I'd know what sort of way a melody was going to go 'cause of the way he'd approach it.

I don't know any songs. People have asked me to play a song, and I say, "I don't know anything."

My original goal was to get into the Top 100. I listened to every song in the Top 100 every day. I knew them all - this is where the gods reside.