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Nine times out of 10 when people do a tribute album or tribute songs for somebody, it's what I call 'white boys playing reggae'. They know they can't, we know they can't, so they sing like they can't and play like they can't. They gently make fun of the idiom or sing in a false accent.
--
John Gerome (June 5, 2006) "Roth still 'Runnin' with the Devil' on bluegrass tribute", Associated Press.

 

David Lee Roth

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I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. ... I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.
And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

 

Woody Guthrie

 

Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa
I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all.
Sad songs is all I know.
I keep singing them sad sad songs, y'all.
Sad songs is all I know.
It has a sweet melody tonight
Anybody can sing it any old time.
What's in your heart puts you in a groove
And when you sing this song,
It'll make you're whole body move.

 

Otis Redding

 

My tribute really was "The Show Must Go On." There's a lot in there. I remember writing this line — "my soul is painted like the wings of butterflies" — and I brought it to him one morning, a little worried about what he would think of it. I said, "Do you think that's okay? Can you sing that?" And he went, "Darling, I can sing that and I will give it my all." Because he knew what it was all about and it didn't need to be said.

 

Freddie Mercury

 

Now they sing out his praises on every distant shore
But so few remember what he was fightin' for
Oh why sing the songs and forget about the aim?
He wrote them for a reason, why not sing them for the same?

 

Phil Ochs

 

My singing used to be awful," admits Folds. "I don't have Jeff Buckley's voice. I don't write songs as an excuse to hear myself sing. It's the other way around: I sing so I can hear my songs. It can be kind of scary. You're on the radio next to -- well, on the shelf next to Jeff Buckley. We're in the B's. People can flip through and pick up his record instead and hear a lot better singer. He has that knack. I've had to really work at it. Of course, he probably doesn't play piano as well as me. I'm not going to get all competitive with the guy because obviously he's not doing so well these days.

 

Jeff Buckley