Top 937 Songwriter Quotes & Sayings

I'm not a natural songwriter.

We got a Grammy for writing 'No Scrubs.' It contributed to me getting Songwriter of the Year. I was the first woman to get Songwriter of the Year from ASCAP and 'No Scrubs' was part of the reason for me getting it.

One of the greatest tools you have as a songwriter is anonymity. If someone knows too much about the songwriter, they don't get to insert their own characters. I don't want the audience thinking about the gay guy who wrote the song.

Especially on Broadway, composers and lyricists fretted over their creations, obsessed over every rhyme, every critical chord or interval. The stakes were so high. On Broadway, people were watching and judging, especially newspaper critics who knew a thousand ways to slice and dice a songwriter for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands of faithful readers. There was no anonymity for the Broadway songwriter. Even the best could find themselves stripped naked the morning after by the tastemakers and their readers.

I love it when people refer to me as a singer-songwriter. I get flutters in my stomach because they say, 'This is Grace VanderWaal, singer-songwriter,' not, 'This is Grace VanderWaal, winner of 'America's Got Talent.'' I'm so proud of that; it's such a big chapter of my life. But it's nice to kind of not be known as just that.

I'm a songwriter, actually. And when I say I'm a songwriter, I'm saying I can write songs for more than just myself.

I'm a songwriter.

It was like I had evolved to a certain stage where I was stuck in this songwriter bag as an image. But basically at heart, I'm a rocker. And I still am. But I was caught up in the singer/songwriter bag and I wasn't really enjoying it.

I was never a topical songwriter.

I think I was born to be a songwriter.

I want to be a producer and not a songwriter.

I think Bob Dylan's a good songwriter. I think he's the best songwriter in the world probably.

I've always been a songwriter.

I'm a very emotional singer and songwriter.

I'm a songwriter. Everything affects me.

It's not like that when you're a songwriter - songwriters aren't like pulp writers or journalists, even. You just follow the muse. It's called muse-ic. Whenever the muse decides to bestow her inspiration on the songwriter, then the song is born.

No, my son's a songwriter and he does that.

As a songwriter, metaphor is instinctual.

There's no one songwriter in the band. It's collaborative, and we all have different tastes.

I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve. I didn't take it all that seriously when I started. It was a little bit of a stigma to being a songwriter or a folkie back then. I did a lot of send-ups of sensitive singer-songwriter stuff when I was starting out, which limited my development as a songwriter in a way. I wasn't really fully given license to explore that until the mid-90s. I'm still working on it; I'm a little bit of a late bloomer.

I don't mind being labeled as a political songwriter. I've chosen to do that. What really annoys me is being dismissed as a political songwriter. That really pains me, because life isn't all about love; it's not all about politics, either. It's a beautiful mixture of events that absolutely baffle you, and you think, "Why can't I do something about that?", whether those events are in your bedroom, or out there in the wide world. In our daily lives we engage with them at different times, and I'm trying to write about the whole human experience, or my perspective on it anyway.

I hated the thought of being just a songwriter.

Anyway, in my performance style, I'm a singer-songwriter. People can call it neo-soul or R&B or whatever. But at the core, when you see me live, I'm a singer-songwriter.

My theory is this; I'm not a political songwriter. I'm an honest songwriter.

The business today is completely different and it's very producer driven, so that a songwriter needs to have producing chops, be a singer/songwriter, or find a singer to develop.

I wanted to be a songwriter.I didn't so much want to be a performer.I more grew into that just from being a songwriter.

I'm a songwriter, that's what I love.

I don't think people really understood what I did. And you know, in my book, 'A Helluva High Note' deals with my back story, that I was a songwriter, that I spent years trying to hone my craft and being rejected and then finally becoming a successful songwriter, record executive and publisher.

I always wanted to be an artist; being a songwriter for myself was always a must but being a songwriter for others has been a bonus.

I'm a record producer and songwriter; I'm a problem-solver.

Very unique: I was a singer-songwriter-guitarist. Very unusual in the late Seventies to find a singer-songwriter, and on top of that, a guitarist.

I didn't want to be the crippled songwriter or the crippled singer. I wanted to be the singer or the songwriter who was crippled. I wanted to be larger than life and a man among men.

The thing is, I'm not a prolific songwriter.

As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music.

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

I've retreated to what I was originally, which is an individual songwriter.

I'm a songwriter first.

At the end of the day, I'm a songwriter.

You kind of have to have no ego to be a producer and a songwriter.

I'm not a children's songwriter. I'm not in that world.

If you want to be a songwriter, you've got to obsess over it.

As a songwriter, it can be a kiss of death for you to fall in love.

I'm a songwriter and I'd love to make that a part of my career.

The exciting thing about a songwriter is that, you know, particularly if you're a songwriter and an artist and you play the parts and you're producing it and all that, you have various times you have to critique what you do.

What Autotune allows is for people like myself and Kanye West not to depend on the singer. Back in the Fifties, the songwriter was rendered invisible. Now the songwriter is there in the forefront.

The business today is completely different and it's very producer driven, so that a songwriter needs to have producing chops, be a singer, songwriter, or find a singer to develop.

My identity is mostly as a songwriter and lyricist and singer. I also have a lot of production ideas but I have my own limitations in terms of what instruments I'm actually proficient at and what I can do myself, so I really love working with people on the production end; just really going for it with orchestration and instrumentation and production. That's where I see myself going: maintaining my integrity and abilities as a songwriter, but applying it to different contexts, to where I can put on a huge feathered costume and roll around in the ocean.

I'm a singer, songwriter from Mexico.

I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.

Michael Jackson is an underappreciated songwriter and an underappreciated singer. I think the world only gives him the most recognition for his dancing. He was an awesome singer and an amazing songwriter.

My only weapon is my pen, I'm a songwriter.

I've learned and grown as a songwriter.

As a songwriter, you're allowed to write anything, and as a person, I am all colors in the rainbow. I've been through everything, you know, so I can write a positive song like 'Better Get to Livin'' because that's my attitude. But that doesn't mean I'm happy all the time. You can't be a deep and serious songwriter without feelings. You kinda have to live with your feelings out on your sleeve and get hurt more than most people. The fear I might get hurt means I might not be able to write another song.

Being singer/songwriter implies versatility and being able to create more than one medium, and R&B artist is a box, simple as that. It is 'that's what you do, that's what you are', and that's a little unfair, to me, because I don't just do that. So I like singer/songwriter because it allows me to move a little bit more freely.

Vulnerability can be empowering as a songwriter and storyteller.

I was like, 'Josh Tillman, you are not a songwriter. You are an ape. Stop thinking of yourself as a songwriter.'

I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter - I just didn't identify as a songwriter at all.

I see myself as a songwriter and a poet.

I consider myself a songwriter before anything else. The fact that I have been able to write both of my records and establishing myself as a songwriter is super-important to me. Some people have that gift, where they can take on anything and make people believe it. I like to do a song from personal experience.

I don't think I'm a good-enough songwriter.