Audience Quote by Frank Sinatra

I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where…

— Stephen Sondheim

Big, evocative words get thrown around, and people can sing along to passionately as if the lyrics just materialized out of the ether, largely…

— Dan Bejar

Why write a song when no one can play the notes or understand the lyrics?

— Christopher Moore

If you're doing a music film, you've got to be singing about something. Or, you have to be singing in a vocabulary that has…

— Jonathan Demme

The way I teach people to sing... I have them talk the lyric out until it sounds like something they really believe, like an…

— Margaret Whiting

A lot of times, people are ashamed of feeling weak and being rejected - so it's liberating to be able to sing about those…

— Banks

I don't think the singers take it as seriously as we used to. The words, the meaning, the phrasing, the feeling of the song.…

— Vera Lynn

They hear it come out, but they don't know how it got there. They don't understand that's life's way of talking. You don't sing…

— Ma Rainey

When there are no lyrics, people can picture what they want. It's a reflection of where they are in their lives. Music becomes a…

— Hiromi Uehara

To sing a song is like whispering to a child's ear. It is an art heavily relying on improvisation.

— Andrea Bocelli

It is important that the audience should understand every syllable of every word, for only then can they grasp the meaning of the song.

— Kate Smith

“Music blows lyrics up very quickly, and suddenly they become more than art. They become pompous and they become self-conscious ... I firmly believe…

— Stephen Sondheim