Song Legacy Quotes

'Boy,' 'October,' 'War,' 'The Unforgettable Fire' and 'The Joshua Tree,' those records, they're part of my musical DNA and structure.

We've been fortunate. 'Push It' will never die.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

I am honored that 'Liquid Swords,' the song and album, have been so widely embraced for so long.

If I hear one of my songs by anybody, it's a dream come true every time for me as a songwriter, because I want to write a song, I want to write a song that the world can sing and will always sing.

I've 300 other songs, but 'Lady In Red' is just one of them. Funnily enough, in America, it is massive, but most people wouldn't have a clue who Chris de Burgh was.

If you're a songwriter, you want to write a song like "Oh Yeah" that radically shifts everything. You can definitely retire on that song. You want to have something you can put in your songbook that everybody can recognize, whether it's a good or bad thing.

This is my seventh decade... and every once in a while I get a hankering to re-visit these songs again... songs with which I have had a great relationship.

My view is that the great songwriting happened between 1920 and 1960. We're all, in our different ways, descended from the great songwriters of that era.

The first song I learned on the guitar was a Kenny Chesney song called 'What I Need to Do'; it was just an easy song to play... and it was really cool to see that come full-circle a few years later and have him record a song that I was part of.

A lot of people don't realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

'If You Could Read My Mind' was written during the collapse of my marriage. It's a great song. No one has any gripes about it. I wondered what my wife and daughter might think. My daughter is the one who got me to correct 'The feelings that you lacked' to 'The feelings that we lacked'.

There are certain songs that just stick around and do something that transcends whatever time they were written in. Through different eras, people are able to impart different meaning to the song, and they become part of some sort of consciousness.

When I pull into a city and I rent a car and it's Nashville, or it's London, or I'm driving in the taxi to the hotel, and on comes one of my songs, it's like, 'Oh my God, they're still playing these songs on the radio.' And you still feel tearful and very grateful that somebody still likes these songs that you made up.

If a man, in a lifetime of 50 years, can point to six songs that are immediately identifiable, he has achieved something. Irving Berlin can sing 60 that are immediately identifiable. Somebody once said you couldn't have a holiday without his permission.

The song was wordless; The singing will never be done.

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them, Fair the fall of songs When the singer sings them. Still they are carolled and said - On wings they are carried - After the singer is dead And the maker buried.

I don't like the idea that I'm a one-trick pony, even if I am! No matter what else I do, I have to make sure that 'Elephant' isn't Tame Impala's biggest song anywhere.

You put your blood, sweat, and tears into an album and you think that's where it ends, but no - when you go on tour you're still carrying the life of that album and the life of those songs until you put your next project out.

The best thing that can happen is that a song you've written will live in the world so people can hear it.

I love "Heartbreaker." "Heartbreaker" stands up for me still. It still works to me. The sentiment is still timely and it just works. But I don't want to do that again. I'm not interested in re-creating that. That was great and I'll just leave it there.

I just love that whole Brill Building era. I will always regret not being there. That's where I belong.

I just don't want any songs to go unheard.

The Grand Ole Opry is an artist, and I am proud to be one of its songs.

As a songwriter, I do kind of look at 'Santa Monica' as a thing outside of itself, because it isn't just my song. This is a song a lot of people tell me is a part of their high school or college years. That means a lot to me.