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If I had to take eveything into consideration, [the truly essential song] would have to be "Conga." First, because I don't think I can get away with not performing that song in some shape or form. Second, because it started the possiblility of "Mi Tierra" [Estefan's top-selling Spanish album] happening. Not only did it talk about a specific rhythm of my homeland [Cuba], it talked about being Latino, and the celebratory nature of dance. It was very musically forward in that it mixed a funk bassline and a 2/4 beat on the drums and the Latin percussion. It was something that really put us on the map. And even though it's a frivolous and fun song, it talks about who we are as immigrants in this land.
--
Reuters (November 17, 2006)

 

Gloria Estefan

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Ever since I was a little boy, I would study composition. And it was Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky that influenced me the most. If you take an album like Nutcracker Suite, every song is killer, every one. So I said to myself, 'Why can't there be a pop album where every...' — People used to do an album where you'd get one good song, and the rest were like B-sides, they'd call them "album songs" — and I'd say to myself 'Why can't every one be like a hit song? Why can't every song be so great that people would want to buy it if you could release it as a single?. So I always tried to strive for that. That was the purpose for the next album.

 

Michael Jackson

 

[On 2 Live Crew] One song was 'Suck My Dick'. Not please. Not honey, do you have a minute? 'Suck My Dick'. Like soomething the Beatles coulda rolled out. "Hey, Jean, would you like to write 'Suck My Dick'?" "Well, I don't know, do we have time? Sounds like such a hard song to write." That was the song! 'Suck My Dick'! F**kin' album sold two million records with a song called "Suck My Dick"! Like the guy got up one morning and went, "you know, today I wanna write a song. Today I want to write a love song. I want to write a song that tells how a woman and a man feel when they meet each other for the first time and they fall in love; I want to put into words feelings that men have always had, but they've never been able to express. All right, I think I'll call this song..." [Pauses, then the audience yells "Suck My Dick"] Yeah. It's that song that's gonna be on that f**kin' Golden Oldie rap album in ten years... "Where were you when you heard 'Suck My Dick?'" Remember those old days?

 

Sam Kinison

 

Then this song came on—I will never forget it—it was called "The Funk Soul Brother." And I will always remember that because it was also all of the lyrics... and, er, it was that school of songwriting, you know, very easy on the words in case they get wasted, I don't know what- there's a shortage, and... it sounded like a million fire engines chasing ten million ambulances through a war zone and was played at a volume that made the empty chair beside me bleed. And it went, erm, "Funk soul brother... right about now... yeah... it's the, it's the funk soul brother... check it out. It's, er, well... it's the funk soul brother, essentially. He's, er, he's coming. He's coming at you. It's the... well... it's the funk soul brother." And after a while, I began to penetrate the meaning of this song, you know? I gathered that somebody was about to arrive, and everybody else was terribly excited - maybe he was bringing cake, or something, they didn't say - but the thing was, you see, he wasn't there yet. Ha ha, that was the hook! And I'm not saying it's a bad song, you know, or anything like that. All I'm saying is that if you get, I don't know, a broom, say, and dip it in some brake fluid, put the other end up my arse, stick me on a trampoline in a moving lift, and I would write a better song on the walls. That's all I'm saying.

 

Dylan Moran

 

"The Man Comes Around" is a song that I wrote, it's my song of the apocalypse, and I got the idea from a dream that I had — I dreamed I saw Queen Elizabeth. I dreamed I went in to Buckingham Palace, and there she sat on the floor. And she looked up at me and said, "Johnny Cash, you're like a thorn tree in a whirlwind." And I woke up, of course, and I thought, what could a dream like this mean? Thorn tree in a whirlwind? Well, I forgot about it for two or three years, but it kept haunting me, this dream. I kept thinking about it, how vivid it was, and then I thought, Maybe it's biblical. So I found it. Something about whirlwinds and thorn trees in the Bible. So from that, my song started and... "The Man Comes Around." The song turned out to be "The Man Comes Around."

 

Johnny Cash

 

It started out — my mom and dad took a little vacation to Mexico and they left $250 for food. But instead of food we went and bought some instruments. We got a bass, guitar and a set of drums. ... I was 19. Dennis was 15. Carl was 17. Mike was 18. Al was 19. And so we wrote a song called "Surfin'" in my living room. We were all playing and singing and Mike and I wrote a song called "Surfin'" and that's how it all started.

 

Brian Wilson