Toby Keith Song Quotations

If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, Is that a song? I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.

Writing songs and looking for ideas is like blinking my eyes. It's an involuntary muscle. I do it without thought.

When you've got an extra gear in your head where that's all you do, you've constantly got a little radar up. ... And when something hits that strikes that beeper, hits that radar, it's like my song skills kick right in and go, 'Oh, OK, there's a song in that.' And then I start trying to figure it out.

There are a couple of things that are really brought home from a female perspective. In the studio I sing hard, and she softened that up. On 'Crash Here Tonight' she said 'You have a rich baritone voice, and I think this song can be just as sexy as all get out. Let's keep it in this register. Let it be sassy and intimate.

I loved both [Bob] Seger and the Eagles, knowing why they didn't play some of the songs I wanted to hear. But at the same time, they covered all the big bases, and the stuff that most people had heard. But they definitely had a bunch of album cuts that I wanted to hear that they didn't get around to.

I've written 90 percent of the songs in my career, on all my albums.

My fans have been very loyal to me, so I want 'em into the mix every song. I don't want 'em having breaks on stuff I'm trying to push on them.

Through the years I've accumulated this big bag of songs. When I go out I do close to two hours, and it's all just attitude - and up-tempo. I've accumulated so many of those types of songs now that the show just gets off with a bang, and I'll only do two or three ballads the whole show.

My first gig, I was about 17 or 18. But I'd been singing a long time. I got a guitar when I was 8, and started trying to write songs as a teenager.

In the years that Ive seen concerts, when Ive paid to see somebody I want to see, there would be a certain amount of songs Id want to hear. So whether its stuff I want to play every night or not - or stuff Ive been playing for years or stuff you get tired of playing - you have to play what people pay for and make it fair for them.

Writing is not work. In fact, theres nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.