Pastoral Resources

Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn't thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden.

We are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he finds one that really says something.

When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!

Well, Neighbours wanted to do a song on the show, and they asked me what songs I had. I told them I'd just written this song, called Born to Try, and I had just gone overseas and spoken to some people from Song about it.

If part of the purpose of making an album is to get some radio play, then you might as well think about that. But that's not really how we picked the songs.

I feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist.

I haven't written enough songs to be able to say that I have a system. I've only written a handful.

Actually, the funny thing is, after all these years, I've got all these new songs to learn for the show we're doing at Joe's Pub, so it's kind of fun to get down and rehearse new things, and also rethink some of the older songs, how we're going to do them.

It creates a conflict of interest - what songs would I use for me, and what would I use for the band.

Once I'd chosen the songs, it seemed like it would just be a question then of recording them. But it's a case of trying to re-invent the songs; taking them in different directions.

I tend to like songs that are very emotional, that strike a chord with me emotionally.

I always hate explaining away songs, because for me they mean something, and for other people, they'll mean something absolutely different.

I didn't write songs for a very long time.

I can tell jokes. I can talk to the audience. I can relax. I can change my songs whenever I want. I can change the tempos. I can change the mood, because I'm in charge.

In high school, I was Mr. Choir Boy. I had solos, I was helping out the tenors with their parts and our choir teacher would ask me what songs we should do.

We still play Foreigner songs. I play the songs that I was involved in writing.

I find singing some of Foreigner's older songs are a little reckless and not exactly who I am now.

The divergence of songs in the new population away from those in the progenitor population would only be prevented if these processes were balanced by repeated immigration and subsequent breeding: song flow.

Species can be recognized by their morphological characteristics and songs.

But to make a holiday record that involves favorite American songs and then also get to sing about Jesus birth, it just seemed like a real easy, subtle way to combine a couple of things that I love.