Mick Jagger Song Quotations

I must be careful not to get trapped in the past. That's why I tend to forget my songs.

A lot of times songs are very much of a moment, that you just encapsulate. They come to you, you write them, you feel good that day, or bad that day.

Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.

You have to write a song around this specific character or to enhance a specific scene. A lot of other craft goes on.

There's hundreds of different ways of writing songs.

We have recorded songs on the same day that were released years later in other albums.

Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.

When you write songs, you have to like them yourself first, but then you have to make everyone else like them, because you can force them to play it, but you can't force them to like it.

I'm interested in feedback and learning what people want. It's a tricky thing for me when I do a set list. You get bored doing the same songs. Let's say we do one ballad in two hours, and it's "Wild Horses." If you say, I'm tired of that, let's try something less well known, and then you're out there stumbling through this song you just relearned at sound check, and you realize people probably want "Wild Horses" instead of this (laughs). You do need to do some songs that aren't so well known. The question is how many? I'm open to people posting their requests.

One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live.