Chorus Quotes

I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.

Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus’ worth of lyrics, and so there’s a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn’t qualify as ‘great literature.’

In many ways, ‘William Shakespeare‘s Star Wars‘ is modeled on Shakespeare’s Henry V, which relied on a chorus to explain in words the battles of Harfleur and Agincourt that could never be captured on the Elizabethan stage.

Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around ’84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn’t make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.

I was in the chorus in high school, not a soloist. I was on the basketball team. I was in modern dance, part of the group. I was a cheerleader, part of the group. I played the violin, part of the orchestra. I never wanted to be out there alone. Ever.

Le Petit is where I cut my teeth with some of my early roles. In 1982, I was in the chorus of ‘Gypsy‘ and soon after I had my first lead as Jamie Lockhart in ‘The Robber Bridegroom.’

I’m definitely trying to make songs that people can sing along to and remember. If you can recognize a chorus and leave with it in your head, it’s usually a good sign. But then with the verses, I can get a little more free form. I don’t really like to copy and paste things.

I’ll never forget when we played Shepherd‘s Bush in London. We played ‘I Run To You’, and we put the mic out for the last chorus, and you could hear them singing the chorus with the beautiful accent that they have.

I just wanted to be normal. I wanted to have a normal life. I wanted to have children. And when I was picked out of a chorus line and cast in a TV series, I got anxious, so I took the bull by the horns and went to see a psychologist. And it was the greatest move I ever made.

When I learning to write songs, I never really was interested in the chorus.

I always enjoyed participating in artistic endeavors, and I remember in high school participating in chorus, drama and singing madrigals, mainly because they were an easy A. I loved being in plays and musicals too, but you didn’t really get credit for those.

When the bus or the plane rolled or flew through the night, they sang songs of their own composition about Mr Nixon and the Republicans in chorus with the Kennedy staff and felt that they, too, were marching like soldiers of the Lord to the New Frontier.

A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus.

I first sang ‘Holding Back the Years’ in my earliest band, Frantic Elevators. When the Elevators split and I started Simply Red, I returned to the song and wrote the ‘I’ll keep holding on‘ chorus.

If I do a song with a chorus and a verse, it takes me about 25 minutes. If I do a song with two verses or stretch out the song, it takes me about 30 to 35 minutes.

I just start playing music and eventually I sing something, a line of a verse or a B section or a line of a chorus, and the line that I end up singing is related to the music I’m playing, if that makes any sense. And I go from there.

The real challenge of writing songs isn’t just writing a bunch of parts – like a verse, chorus, verse – but making something that flows together, that brings you back.

I’d much rather fail than do something like ‘The Chorus Line’ movie, sanitized and Hollywoodized.

I decided to always sing in the back with the chorus and never went up front because I had trouble performing.

I was up for parts in ‘Charlie‘s Angels’ and ‘Three’s Company,’ but other people got them. At the time I was very disappointed because I knew the shows would be tremendous hits. But if I had done either I would not have done the following: ‘Chorus Line,’ ‘Dancin’,’ ‘Chicago,’ ‘Movie Movie,’ ‘All That Jazz’ and ‘Annie.’

‘MMMBop’ took about a year to actually get completed. The chorus idea had really been around for a long time, and then we built the song around it.

I guess my first professional experience was when my church choir director told my mother that I had a gift with my voice and said that I should think about auditioning, at 11 years old, for the chorus of our regional opera company.

Benjamin Franklin maintained that every star is a sun, and every sun nourishes a ‘chorus of worlds’ just like ours.

You know for some strange reason I like to write the verse first. I mean I know the majority of people do the chorus first and when I think about it, I guess it does make more sense to do the chorus first, but I just like to write the verses first, I don’t know why.

I found acting when I was 14, when I got cast in the chorus in a high school play, ‘The Boyfriend.’ In my high school, we did mainly musicals, so I just started doing nothing but musicals for years and loved it.

I’ve always loved the mixture of crushing live drums with a programmed groove, that really cool blend, like in the verse there’s a really funky drum beat that is programmed then it comes in to the chorus; you’ve got that enormous human feel where the band kicks in.

My basic setup is my Ibanez Fireman guitars and for pedals, the TC Electronic MojoMojo is the mainstay of my board, along with a Catalinbread Calissto Chorus.

When I was in grade school, I remember singing in a chorus where they actually had two parts going. It was very easy for me to pick out the harmonies, and I kind of just went with it.

The thing is, the way we write is all jams and bits and pieces that get pieced together and sometimes things are written with intentions of being a song, and then all of a sudden the main riff of this song, six months later turns into a verse or a chorus of another song.

For the chorus of ‘Secrets,’ we used The Romantics’ ‘Talking in Your Sleep‘ and ‘Pale Shelter‘ by Tears for Fears. It’s like hip-hop: just grab it.

I think the inception of my interest in arts was when I was around 9 or 10 and I started dancing. I was really convinced that I was going to go to New York and be onstage in ‘A Chorus Line.’

My father died when I was 11. He was a vaudeville comedian. He worked in one movie, ‘Ladies of the Chorus,’ as Marilyn Monroe‘s father.

I’m always like this with a new movie role. I always get super-defensive and make noises like a rooster, Maybe that’s because I spent so much time as a chorus girl.

I did everything in high school – I played tennis, I played basketball, I was in chorus, I was in the band, I even did the mascot senior year… I went to the football games, and at half-time I went across the field, met all the cheerleaders and got their numbers! The same year, I won prom king!

When I moved to New York to act I was no good at working restaurants – hosting, waiting, bussing, dishwashing – I wasn’t good at any aspect. But I did have a guitar. So I would sing ‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,’ but you would only hear the chorus because the train comes by every 30 seconds.

‘Gorilla Man’ is a composite of a few individuals, but the song itself was actually inspired by James Taylor. I spied his ‘Gorilla’ album laying on my floor and in some altered state, instantly started singing the chorus. It was fun to write. There’s an old notebook with at least three more verses in it somewhere.