Quotes about song-and-singing

Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so.

— W. H. Auden

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

— Joan Baez

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.

— Hilaire Belloc

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!

— Robert Browning

Swans sing before they die -- t'were no bad thing did certain persons die before they sing.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.

— Melissa Etheridge

If a song's about something I've experienced or that could've happened to me it's good. But if it's alien to me, I couldn't lend anything to it. Because that's what soul is all about.

— Aretha Franklin

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.

— Billie Holiday

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

— Horace

I'd rather be dead than singing Satisfaction when I'm forty-five.

— Mick Jagger

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.

— Georgia O'Keeffe

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

— Edgar Allan Poe

Odds life! must one swear to the truth of a song?

— Matthew Prior

He who sings, frightens away all his ills.

— Traditional Saying

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

— George Bernard Shaw

I would rather be remembered by a song than by a victory.

— Alexander Smith

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

— Voltaire