Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was in Nashville, I went to our Macy's and went and tried on all the Hannah Montana stuff. Then I said, 'This is weird, I'm wearing my face.'
One of my pet peeves about Nashville is that it tends to be copycatted. I don't want to do that. I've got to be different.
Because Olivia Newton-John wasn't from Nashville, they didn't like her winning our awards. I've got no complaints.
In the mid-1970s, I even decided to make my own country album. I put the idea to my record company, thinking we'd just go into the studio in the U.K. and make a novelty album. But instead, they suggested I go to Nashville. I was flabbergasted. I hadn't expected that at all.
I did enjoy Nashville a lot of the time, because I made really good friends who were really good songwriters, and they would be a joy to hang out with.
Even though there are incredible songs floating around Nashville, it's important for me to have my voice heard.
I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.
There's going to be a point in time when I can go to a NHL game in Nashville with my grandkids. That's really special.
Most of the time in Nashville, you're so replaceable. Anybody can get another nice-looking guy to sing a country song.
As a family we love to come together, so I never want it to feel stuffy where someone feels like they can't kick their feet up. That's the Nashville gal in me.
I'm from Tullahoma, TN which is an hour south of Nashville, and I grew up and wanted to be like Garth Brooks, so I moved to Nashville when I was 18 to chase a dream.
The truth is, that's what we moved to Nashville to do - to learn how to write hit songs. We weren't necessarily trying to get on college radio. We're trying for mass appeal.
I finished high school, moved to Nashville for college, and set out to break into the music business. Every night when I called home with news of my experiences, my mom and dad would encourage me to keep taking those small steps.
I went to Nashville when I was 10. Tried to get a record deal. Everybody was like, 'You're 10. It's not gonna happen. Come back later.'
What I found about 'Nashville' coming in is it's about these small performances. It can be on a big stage but detailed, small, heartfelt, real performances from musicians and singers. So if you try to do something bloated or showy, the directors dial us in and let us know.
My route is a little bit nontraditional. A lot of the people working in Nashville, they have a model. I don't really fit into that.
I grew up in Nashville in a white suburb. We lived next to a Klan member. We didn't see hoods, but my dad knew that guy was a Grand Dragon.
Being a guitarist was scary, honestly, as a girl in Nashville. It just felt like no one was gonna ask me to be in a band and play guitar, like I never was gonna get asked to do that.
I grew up in Maryland on the East Coast - you know, close to D.C. but sort of in the suburban, rural area - and Nashville felt very, very homey to me.
I'm openly gay, and I've got a major label record deal in Nashville, and it happened when I was 42 years old. It's not supposed to happen that way.
Nashville has a formula, and it works a lot of the time, but it wasn't right for me. They're afraid to step outside the box - even though, with me, my success came because I was outside of the box to begin with.
When I first got to Nashville, somebody said that [Kris Kristofferson and I] were the only two people who could describe Dolly Parton without using their hands.
My biggest extravagances are also investments. I have several houses in California, a house in Nashville, an office complex, and I bought the old home place in Tennessee. They are different places for me to write, but I can turn right around and sell them.
My first place in Nashville was like 'Animal House.' The whole band lived under one roof, and most nights the jam sessions ended close to sunrise.
Coming to Nashville has been so motivating and inspirational. Just watching people live and breathe their music and create something that they can feel from start to finish.
Nashville is one of the greatest places for the best songwriters in the world. It's been fantastic to live there and to raise our family there. It's a great town.
I wrote 'Happy Man' with a couple of boys of mine. I have been writing in Nashville for a long time. Of course I was writing songs back in Oklahoma when I was a kid.
Being able to tour and experience all of the stuff that comes from touring, and then being able to come back to Nashville, it's almost like therapy to be able to get into a session and talk about all of the things that I'm going through. It's so much more real to me.
I had been on the road for a long time and was not really getting anywhere. Bob Johnston, a friend of mine, had taken over Columbia in Nashville. He asked me if I wanted to come down. I did - thank God I did.
I would say growing up in Nashville has been a huge influence in my music. Growing up with my dad being a 2-time Grammy-winner, BMI songwriter of the year for five consecutive years in a row, and having the legacy he has is definitely a huge influence, too.
I think the defining moment in my career is the day that I moved to Nashville - September 1, 2001. That's the biggest step to getting here is making that move. Anything that happens, the wonderful opportunities that happen to you, can't happen until you make that move.
I was interviewed for a Grammy television show, and they asked me about Nashville, and I talked for three minutes and when I finished, I was teared up. The whole room was crying. Nashville has given me a home, where I never had a home before.
I studied the philosophy and the discipline of non-violence in Nashville as a student. And I staged a sitting-in in the fall of 1959 and got arrested the first time in February 1960.
It's something that Cory Morrow said to me a long time ago - "Don't ever forget why Nashville is Nashville. The Opry is there for a reason. Country music lives there. Don't be bitter. And don't ever treat Texas or Nashville like either one isn't important."
Nashville, there's people that are ten times more talented than me, ten times better singer than me, song writer than me, but for some reason you get the ball, and now - and now you run with it. And you do the best you can.
Nashville is a lot like my hometown. You learn so quickly once someone hears something about you or sees something, everybody talks about it at dinner. They know your business, so people tend to be more private and not to throw themselves into everyone's faces.
I love the story of the guy coming to Nashville and then kind of getting set down and told, 'This is how the town works,' which, I've totally been there. But the coolest thing about 'Out of Style' is it's a song within a song.
Being on 'Nashville' and working with some incredible people like T-Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller - so many wonderful, incredible musicians that I've been blessed to play with and observe - that has continued to shape the process of arranging music, writing music.
It was just like a dream. I could have ended up with an album that's not all that different from anything else coming out of Nashville. Mutt made the difference. He took these songs, my attitude, my creativity, and colored them in a way that is unique.
I drove to Nashville a few times, met with some people and hung out, went to the Opry, and that kind of stuff. I made the decision - you've got to be present to win, so I packed it up and moved out here, and it's been great. It's been the best decision I ever made.
My father was in record promotion in Los Angeles. He worked for Mercury Records, Capitol Records, and RCA Records. My parents divorced when I was about 9. In 1978, my dad moved to Nashville and opened an independent record promotion company, Mike Borchetta Promotions.
I could put in garage doors or work in McDonald's but that's it. So I figured I might as well play the Nashville game.
I Hope' is the fourth song that I'd ever written in Nashville. I didn't know that it was as special as it was.
I have this friend who has a theory that lots of towns have energies. And, for instance, certain places in Alabama have bad ones because they were built on reservations or built on cemeteries or something. But Nashville has a really gravitational, magnetic pull.
Nashville only thrives when talented people from out of town move here from somewhere else.
I like to sit and listen to conversations here in Nashville. Not in a weird, stalker-ish way. I wander around Tennessee and find myself in little bars just zoning in.
I was really impressed with the dining scenes and how amazing the culinary scene is in Nashville.
A creative space is an important thing. There are so many studios that feel like doctor's offices in Nashville. I couldn't write there.
I could get drunk and run around Nashville naked. But I won't because I want to set a good example for my fans. I think they deserve to have a role model.
I wanted to become a better songwriter, so it seemed like a no-brainer to move to Nashville, where some of the best writers in the world live.