A Quote by Leon Bridges

My music is more than me writing a flashy soul song. They're heartfelt songs about my family and true stories. I have also songs that aren't personal, but just painting a picture. I don't like being put under labels, but my music is going to continue to stay classic and timeless forever.
I always see my songs in colors, and I'm often more inspired by movies and photographs than I am by other songs when I write my music. I'm also inspired by fashion, and I want my music to be a visual painting of what's in my mind.
When I listen to my songs, they seem like pieces of music or art, like a painting that you look at. The reality is that, yes, when I wrote the songs upstairs or wherever, I was writing very specifically about my life or a specific subject matter that's very personal. I've never shied away from that. The vocals and the performance that come after the record, I don't think of that as confessional, but the core of the music is completely. It makes sense that people would see that as being the main thing. I guess not everyone is able to speak so candidly.
My aim is always catchy songs, or songs with meaning and I want to write music people can relate to, about things anyone could go through, just real, honest music... songs that mean something, songs that are inspired by true life events.
It's different from music because music is like going deep down into soul, like scooping out all the difficult, beautiful, messy stuff and putting it into songs. Writing is more like playing for me.
"I dissolve in trust, I will sing with joy, I will end up dust". The line really spoke to me. That's what it is: Enjoy what you have here. You're not going to be here forever, but the songs stay forever. For me, it's like Bowie songs - they carry me, and they continue to, even though he's gone.
I am deeply saddened to hear about the passing of one of my all time heroes, George Jones. Georges' music was real and he was able to touch thousands through his songs. Not only was he a great singer, but he also had the ability to make you relate to every one of his songs, no matter who you are. He and his music will remain timeless in the world of country music. My thoughts and prayers are with his family through this difficult time.
My feeling is that, and I've been writing about my family over the years, although it might make them feel uncomfortable, people generally like to be written about. If I've written a song about the family, they enjoy being mentioned in the songs. Nobody's confronted me and said 'don't write any songs about me.
I was captured by the songs as much as the singer. They grabbed my heart. The reality of Country Music moved me. Even when I was a kid, I liked the sad songs... songs that talked about true life. I recognized this music as a simple plea. It beckoned me.
I hadn't played any music since freshman year of college, more than thirty years ago, so I had to relearn everything. I started writing songs. Some were dance and trance songs (I listen to them a lot while I'm writing), and some were love songs, because that after all is what music is about - dancing and trancing and love and love's setbacks.
When you make timeless music - and I like to think that's what I'm doing - the fun part is picking the songs. You can clip and flop and mix and match, and when the record is timeless and it feels good, you know it's going to have the same appeal whether you put it out now or 10 years from now. That's what I'm about.
At the beginning of my career, I saw an opportunity to forge new ground and focus on songwriting. Not many people were doing that at the time. Pretty much nobody. I thought I could write some really cool songs that would rise above all these dozens of genres that exist within dance music. I'd make it more about the songs. For the last 20 years, I've been sharing stories of my life through music. I've been writing songs about my life.
Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.
The exciting part about sitting down and writing songs, playing shows, or being a musician in general is that you never know where those songs and that music is going to take you. There's such a cool feeling about that the phone could ring tomorrow and someone could say "he guess what? your song..." That really is cool.
Songs kind of live in a timeless place for me, and since I make records I dunno, about every two-and-a-half to three years or something like that, it's just not enough to put all the songs that I have, no matter how much I put.
I write songs. Then I record them. And later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple. I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it...Music is spiritual. The music business is not. Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.
Somebody told me once it takes an Americana song five minutes to say what a country song says in three - so I try to write country songs. But really, all good music is just soul music.
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