Songs Lyrics and YT- Youtube Music Videos: Patti Smith Songs

Patti Smith Songs - Mercy Is Lyrics

Patti Smith - Mercy Is

Patti Smith - Mercy Is Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Noah
Released: 2014

Mercy Is Lyrics

Mercy Is

Patti Smith recorded this collaborative track with the American string ensemble Kronos Quartet and Clint Mansell for the soundtrack of the Darren Aronofsky movie Noah. Smith had approached the director asking if she could write the lullaby that was referenced in the script and this was the result.

Frequent Aronofsky collaborator Mansell, who scored the entire soundtrack, said: "My orchestrator Matt Dunkley and I arranged the music which we roughly laid out alongside Patti's demo, and then we had Kronos and Patti play together in the studio, so it was all done in quite an old school way. This process allowed Patti and Kronos to really express themselves and really find their performance."

Patti Smith (from NME): "Darren told me how he wanted a lullaby for Noah to sing to a child. The idea of the song is mercy as a healing wind."

This is sung by both Noah and his stepdaughter in the movie. Patti Smith then performs the song over the end credits. "I thought Darren (Aronofsky) would want me to deliver it more like a heavy metal ballad," said Smith. "But he wanted it to maintain its integrity as a lullaby. Even when I sang it with Kronos Quartet, I was still delivering it a little more aria-like, and he asked me if I could step back a bit with it."

Patti Smith Songs - People Have the Power Lyrics

Patti Smith - People Have the Power

Patti Smith - People Have the Power Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Dream of Life
Released: 1988

People Have the Power Lyrics

People Have the Power Song Chart

This song was written by Patti Smith and her late husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith. Patti told NME how they tried to infuse the spirit of the '60s into a modern protest song: "We had both protested the Vietnam War when we were young. We had been part of the '60s, where our cultural voice was really strong, and we were trying to write a song that would reintroduce that kind of energy. It's sad for me but quite beautiful. It was really Fred's song - even though I wrote the words, he wrote the music; the concept was his, and he wanted it to be a song that people sang all over the world to inspire them for different causes. And he didn't live to see that happen, but I have. I've seen people. I've walked in marches all over the world where people spontaneously started singing it, you know, whether it's been in Paris or with the Palestinians or, you know, in Spain or New York City, Washington D.C. - and it's so moving for me to see his dream realized."

Patti remembers the moment Fred burst into their kitchen with the idea for this song: "It was around 1986. I was in the kitchen. My late husband was writing music, and he was a great songwriter, Fred "Sonic" Smith, and we were writing some songs together. And I was peeling potatoes, and I remember I was in a bad mood because I had, you know, I was making dinner and washing the clothes and peeling potatoes. And in the middle of it, Fred came in and said, 'Tricia, people have the power, write it.' And I was standing there with a potato peeler thinking I'd like to have the power to make him peel these potatoes, that's what I'd like... but I kept him.

So for the next few nights, I really contemplated - because Fred was very political, and we talked about it, what we wanted to do with this line, which was Fred's. And what we wanted to do was remind the listener of their individual power but also of the collective power of the people, how we can do anything. That's why at the end it goes, 'I believe everything we dream can come to pass, through our union we can turn the world around, we can turn the earth's revolution.' We wrote it consciously together to inspire people, to inspire people to come together."

This song hit #19 on the Mainstream Rock chart.

Patti Smith Songs - Because The Night Lyrics

Patti Smith - Because The Night

Patti Smith - Because The Night Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Easter
Released: 1977

Because The Night Lyrics

Because The Night Song Chart

Despite her large cult following and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame career (she was inducted in 2007), this was Patti Smith's only hit, making it an anomaly in her discography, which was aimed at a far more narrow audience.

For many not familiar with Smith's career or the history of Punk, this is the only recognizable song of hers. The producers of the 2013 movie CBGB, played to this audience when they portrayed singing this song at the famous club in 1975 - two years before she recorded it and a year before it was written. In the film, Smith was played by Mickey Sumner, who is Sting's daughter.

Bruce Springsteen wrote this song. He gave it to Patti Smith in 1976 because he thought it would suit her voice. He was also in a legal battle with his manager, Mike Appel, that kept him from recording for almost three years.

Springsteen gave this to Smith with the music and the chorus. She filled in the lyrics one night while waiting for her husband to call.

Springsteen joined Smith on Stage several times in 1976-1977, while legal battles kept him from recording.

Smith bought her dad a new 1978 Cordoba with the money she made from this.

Smith's producer on the Easter album was Jimmy Iovine, who would go on to great things as a producer and entrepreneur, but was still getting started in the business at the time. "Because The Night" was his first hit as a producer, and he credits Bruce Springsteen for granting him the opportunity. Iovine had worked on Bruce's 1975 Born To Run album, and Springsteen have him the song to deliver to Smith. This "really launched by career," Iovine said.

Smith was hesitant to use a song written by someone else, but changed her mind when she heard Springsteen's demo.

After this song became a hit, Smith dismissed it as "commercial sh-t." She admitted that it was a well-written song, but didn't want it to define her career. (thanks, Adam - Dewsbury, England)

As The Boss was struggling to finish this song, he agreed to Jimmy Iovine's request that Patti Smith could complete it. Springsteen explained why to Mojo magazine August 2010: "It was a love song and I really wasn't writing them at the time. I wrote these very hidden love songs like For You, or Sandy, maybe even Thunder Road, but they were always coming from a different angle. My love songs were never straight out, they weren't direct. That song needed directness and at the time I was uncomfortable with it. I was hunkered down in my samurai position. Darkness… was about stripping away everything - relationships, everything - and getting down to the core of who you were. So that song is the great missing song from Darkness On The Edge. I could not have finished it as good as she did. She was in the midst of her love affair with Fred 'Sonic' Smith and she had it all right there on her sleeve. She put it down in a way that was just quite wonderful."

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