George Collins confessed, "I am enthralled by music. I like the energy and the beauty of it. As a rule, rock and roll is very basic music. It's more of a feel then it is a technical knowledge...I think melody is the cornerstone to a good popular song. Of course the lyrics are very, very important...Music can be poetry."
It had been said, "The curious thing in songwriting is that people remember the melody, not the words, though the musician usually fits his notes to the lyric." Neil Sedaka remarked, "Until real songs came back in 1975, it was bubblegum and English rock."
Goddard Lieberson believed, "Sound is the missing dimension in our historical education. We learn of our heritage through the written word, through paintings and drawings and photographs. But music has a special power and emotional concentration that cannot be equalled by any other form of communication. Music is the American psyche – which is a complicated way of saying there are songs and sounds inside our heads that we're not even aware that we know."
Oscar Hammerstein II maintained, "The most important ingredient of a good song is sincerity...In my early career, I always wrote the words to the music but I like it better to write the words first because when a composer gives you a tune, it’s difficult to fit the rhythm of a pre-composed melody."
Bob Oerman argued, "Country is the last style of music that cares about words and music, that believes a song is supposed to say something – have a beginning, a middle and end – and it rhymes and it often tells a story." Kenny Rogers pointed out, "People like my songs because they stand out from the rest of those pop love songs. I pick songs that tell a story, like a real real yarn, and then have a twist at the end. I always kind of look for songs that the first time you hear them, you feel that you have heard them before, and no matter how poorly you sing them you sound good singing them."
Robert Merrill observed, "Irving Berlin was the greatest Tin Pan Alley songwriter. He was not a great musician but he had a great ear and he had a feeling for melody and words that was precious."
The Bee Gees wrote 5 new songs (including 'Staying Alive', 'Night Fever' and 'More Than a Woman') for the movie, 'Saturday Night Fever'. Barry Gibb recounted, "Robert (Stigwood) told us he wanted 4 songs for a movie he was going to make. The one request was that we write one 8-minute song with a ballad in the middle with frenzy at the beginning and end. It was going to be for a dance scene, and he suggested we do a version of a song we’d written called 'Saturday Night, Saturday Night.'"
Robin Gibb explained, "When we write, we get together and bounce ideas off each other’s heads. We have a guitar and a tape recorder going. We don't have any roles – meaning no certain one of us always writes the words or music...We're writers, and writers shouldn’t stay in one area. We are capable of writing in more formats and we like to do that."
Maurice Gibb added, "Robert explained to us about this young guy, who every weekend blows his wages at a disco in New York, in Brooklyn. So that’s all we knew except it was John Travolta playing the part. We'd done 'If I Can't Have You' and 'How Deep Is Your Love,' and we were thinking to ourselves, 'Wow. It's a disco film. Let's get into some good disco songs'. It took about 2 and a half weeks to write them down as demos. But we never saw a script."
Robin reasoned, "Songwriting is the key...We are songwriters and recorders of our music, primarily. Performing is the last thing. We don’t claim to have the world’s greatest stage act. We simply go on stage and, to the best of our ability, perform the music we write and have had success with."
