A Quote by Loudon Wainwright III

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've never written songs about relationships. I've written songs about how I feel. The songs are more about me, than another person. That's the way I like to look at it.
When I sat down with all the songs before recording, I realised I'd written a few songs specifically about places in America - there was this song about Detroit and another about Yellowstone National Park. My dad is actually American, so I wrote another song about that side of my family.
I have written quite a lot of songs about dealing with my feelings surrounding the disease. I have written songs about the fear and anxiety I have around my disease, and the fear of it coming back. Some of my songs might seem like relationship songs, but are more about my relationship with that struggle.
I was able to notice in a very early stage, there were discrepancies between the people who are writing the songs and discrepancies about the self that I was writing about. I was feeling that there were all these different people, both writing the record and having the record being written about them, even though ostensibly it was me sitting down and documenting a series of life experiences. Part of that, when I recognized this unconscious thing I was doing, was about these spaces, about these gaps.
There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art. ... A lot of my songs are very serious, I'm like dead serious about certain things and I feel that I'm writing about the world, through my own eyes. ... I have a love for simple basic song structure, although sometimes you'd never know it. ... Most of the songs I wrote at night. I would just wake in the middle of the night. That's when I found the space to write.
I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me".
I don't write all my stuff. Everybody always thinks that. But in just about every album I've ever had has been about 50-50 songs I've written or co-written and other people's songs.
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.
Everything that happens to me gets put into a song. For some reason, I'm really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs. There, I don't hold back: names, dates, times, expressions on people's faces, exactly where we were and how it felt, what I wish I would have said to them in the moment. So I'm not only excited about sharing the songs with fans; I'm also pretty interested to hear the response from the guys I've written about on the record.
I make music because it helps me. I feel better after I've written a song. I listen to my own songs, and they make me feel and think about stuff I'd done or someone said to me, and I feel a bit better.
The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'
The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I’m writing about, and that’s why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, “Oh my God, this song is totally about me.”
I always feel like I have got so much to write about, when it comes to writing for the album. I still think that even though my songs are written from my perspective, I think that all age-ranges can relate to the songs.
I've been writing songs since I was a teenager, so one kind of song I've written a lot is about, I don't know, teen angst feelings - feeling unsure of yourself and immature.
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.
Song writing is about the male-female relationship. Yes, there are songs of, of brotherhood and politics but very rarely do we write about computers or, there are car songs, cars are cool. But even in the car songs, it's, ah, usually gets down to me and my baby and my car.
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