Singing a hymn is not like singing a popular piece of music. In church music, singing and making music is a service: both the collective singing and the solo singing are an integral part of the liturgical celebration, intended to help lift the souls of the faithful to God, and the singers themselves are called to a genuine love of God and a fervent life of faith. The goal is to glorify God by sanctifying the liturgical community, not to showcase individual talents.

The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.

I am this thing that needs to sing.

I'm singin' this borrowed tune I took from the Rolling Stones,
Alone in this empty room, too wasted to write my own.

Out of my own great woe
I make my little songs.

A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.

Sing the melody line you hear in your own head. Remember, you don't owe anybody any explanations, you don't owe your parents any explanations, you don't owe your professors any explanations.

I don't sing a song without it meaning something to me, or adding my own interpretation to them.

I needed to sing because nobody else was singing my songs.

I look at the lyrics, and if that's something honest for me at the moment, I'll sing it.

Oh, I just sing like I hurt inside.

I sing, not to hear the echo repeat, a shade fainter, my song! I think of light and not of glory! Singing is my fashion of waging war and bearing witness. And if my song is the proudest of songs, it is that I sing clearly to make the day rise clear!

I wanted just a song to sing, and there came a certain point where I couldn't sing anything. So I had to write what I wanted to sing 'cos nobody else was writing what I wanted to sing.

One's-Self I Sing

One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say
the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.