A Quote by Ben Howard

When you first sit down to write songs, you have to be selfish. — © Ben Howard
When you first sit down to write songs, you have to be selfish.
When we write songs, we don't ever sit down to write an Old Dominion song. We just sit down to write the best song we possibly can.
Sometimes the songs just come to me. I don't sit down to write like you'd sit down to make a pair of boots.
I wouldn't just have other people write songs and me go out and sing it. I would sit down with a guitar and write 11 or 12 good songs for an album and that is gonna take a long time.
When you first sit down to write the first song, until you've maybe got three or four under your belt, it's always, to me, like a mountain to climb. You look at that one blank piece of paper and you think, `God, how many songs do I have to write here?' It always feels like pressure.
The main thing you worry about is just coming up with songs at all. I don't sit down and write stuff like certain writers do. They think about what they are going to write first and then they write it. I just get what comes in at me. It's like I'm a musician and if I can keep my mitt on, I can catch the balls that come at me.
I don't sit down to write a country song. I don't sit down to write a rap song. I just sit down to write a song, you know what I mean? And I try to make that song the best it can be.
There are two things John and I always do when we're going to sit down and write a song. First of all we sit down. Then we think about writing a song.
I keep a journal and just kind of take notes. I don't really so much sit down and write songs - I just take a lot of notes, and sometimes I sit down and put them all together.
It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.
I don't sit down to write a funny story. Every single thing I sit down to write is meant to be sad.
I try to write a lot and my process is kind of back and forth. I procrastinate a lot so when I do sit down to write, I'm pretty lazy at it. And it's such a frustrating thing sometimes - writing - when you don't do it all the time, you get that thing in your head that you have nothing to talk about and you can't write songs.
Our goal is to write memorable songs. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer. Each time we sit down to write, we have hopes of coming up with something that will be remembered forever. That's our dream.
I didn't just sit down and write 'Summer In Kingston' from scratch; it came about from a bunch of songs I already had.
My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it...In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie...It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs...I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
I kind of miss writing songs the way that I used to write songs, in the sense that I would just sit down, and all these words that told a story would come out. There's one Bon Iver song called 'Blood Bank' that is more representative of an older lineage of songs, which I like and I sort of miss. But it just doesn't happen anymore for me.
When I sit down in front of a Windows machine, I can't write; when I sit down in front of my Mac, I can write. So I only use Macs.
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