Song Success Quotes

When 'I'm Sorry' came out and became such a huge hit, that made 'Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree' start selling. Then that became a huge, huge hit.

With 'Love Shack,' once we put that chorus in, it did have more of a song structure. Even though the verses are all kind of different, the chorus was there along with 'The Love Shack' - I think that really made it a hit. Once we heard it in the studio, we played it for R.E.M., and they were like, 'Yes this is a hit.'

I have seen more bad songs make it because of MTV than good ones that haven't.

I don't want to be oh-so-brag-about-it, but 'The Rain' is hot.

I'd love to write a song that someone else sings that can actually sing really well.

You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.

Things began to pick up for me record-wise when in 1971 I wrote 'She's a Lady' for Tom Jones.

You can tell if something feels special. But there are so many moving parts involved in making the song a hit. The radio has to deliver, the management has to deliver in terms of booking the right promotions... just being a good song isn't enough.

I often thought that if I had been working with Mark James at American Studios, I would have had a pop hit before I ever moved out of Memphis. But that didn't happen.

I had no idea 'Big Green Tractor' was going to be as big a hit as it was. You just can't predict those things.

Look, when a song becomes a hit, it happens because of its tune and melody, and not for the lyrics in the first place.

I was invited to L.A. when I was 16 for a weekend-long songwriting session by a writer I had met through my voice teacher in Pittsburgh. My first hit, 'Hide Away,' was one of the songs written during those sessions. It was played for a radio rep who then started a new label; the song got a pretty organic start at radio and then took off.

I always say it took me 10 minutes to write 'Cars,' but if I am honest it could have been even less than that - and it has been a really successful song over the years. It is still massively used, in advertising, in films, and people do cover versions of it a lot.

I'm a serious aficionada of country music - Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I've even written some songs. They haven't done anything of mine yet. But it's only a matter of time.

The only way to have longevity is to have good songs.

It's a weird thing to say you want people to be sick of your song, but I guess that's what happens if your song goes really well.

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

I wrote a song for Icona Pop which boosted my confidence quite a lot.

When 'Joker' came out in '73, I finally got a viral hit. Every DJ who heard it played it.

Our first single, 'Ticket To Ride', was a kind of half-hit, half flop: in some places it was number one, in others it was ash-tray material.

Songwriters, you have to work - you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song's going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

I went to a radio station on Long Island in 1982, and thank goodness for me, it was so new that there was no receptionist. So the DJ opened up his booth, and took my tape and listened to it and thought it was a hit song.

I want all of my songs to do well whether I've written them or not.

I wanted to have a go at a pop career. My first single, 'Baby I Don't Care', was a hit, and the second, 'Bye Bye Boy', reached the Top 20.

Often, it's the little things, like the title of a song, that can make a huge difference in its success.