Top 773 Songwriting Quotes & Sayings - Page 11

I find on songwriting, I really have to work at making sure I'm not imitating myself. You know? Which happens to all of us. When an artist becomes really famous, you'll start listening to songs and saying "Wait...I've heard that before" and it'll be one of theirs. We all fall into that rut. If you don't have something to force you out of it, then it's kind of a dangerous business.

Different people have different ways of doing things. For me, becoming a songwriter first and falling in love with the Nashville songwriting community and the process of songs and getting better and putting more in what I wanted to say, was absolutely vital in me even wanting to be an artist.

It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.

I started meeting the right people, like [producer] Dave [Okumu], who explained to me how songwriting is really simple - "just like shitting," he said. "You gotta let it all out." When he put it like that, however disgusting it is, it made a lot of sense to me.

I never judge my own songwriting. It's just my heart. What's there to judge about your own heart?

Of course, you can't teach songwriting. You can only encourage people to do it and help them to sort out for themselves what they want to achieve, and get a list of exercises together that improves the craft and gives them more access to the craft of writing good songs.

One thing that I'm really interested in is the kind of esoteric detail that surrounds these great figures. And Wikipedia is full of that kind of stuff, whether it's true or untrue. It staggers me: why, in the short space assigned to a person or an event, that kind of random information is there. To be honest, that's wonderful fuel for songwriting.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.

We had some ups and downs, creatively, as the season went on, which is true of any show. If you compound that by the production that we go through, in terms of original songwriting and recordings, and all that is happening simultaneously, where we didn't do as good a job, as I hope we do this year, is the arcing of the storylines and the consistency of going in one direction with a character, and continuing in a really interesting way with that arc.

When I listen to and play the songs from 'Narrow Stairs' now, that record feels like a record where we had established a style that arguably was more our own than it was in the beginning. Going into that record, I felt a lot more confident in my songwriting. It was a fairly prolific time for me.

The songwriting style, to me, is superior. There was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I'm attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity.

Well, [bluntness in songwriting]'s a lot cheaper than therapy.... There's been a lot of things going on for the past 10 years that I just never really confronted, or used metaphors to do so. This time out I wanted to make sure that everyone knows what I'm talking about and where I'm coming from.

Wonderful songwriting, beautiful production, and deeply rooted in what makes American Roots Music great: Deep Southern Pain. It's the hurt that brings the songs, and it's the songs that heal the hurt. Jonathan's songs bring us there, and back. Check this record out, it's a good 'un.

The 'Black Album' was my real first introduction to Metallica. I was, like, 12 or 13 at the time. We were just getting into music, and I liked that album a lot, but it didn't necessarily change my life. But when I started picking up all the other Metallica records, 'Master of Puppets' was the one to me that stuck out with its songwriting.

When I work with artists, I give them a general guideline of what my vision is. Then they're going to speak their minds on how they view it, too. The song that defines 'Neon Future' the best is the title track. I wrote that with Luke Steele of Empire of the Sun. It's through his words. We had an amazing songwriting session together, connecting.

I think Americana music is music that is generally more singer/songwriter oriented. It has more to do with the songwriting. The music, it's more like stories set to music.

I've always written songs to use music as a form of therapy or as a way to look at my obstacles or my memories from a different perspective. It's always helped me realize the grass isn't always greener and how I need to live more in the moment. My songwriting is a documentation of whatever's happening in my life at that point in time.

There's a big gaping hole in the EDM space for songwriting. It's one thing to learn how to be a great sound designer and become big just on sound design. Especially if you're in the dubstep category, it's like, how much fatter and more interesting can you make those drops.

Songwriting is one thing that I have blessed to myself. It's a very personal thing for me, the business is very shared and you're constantly around people. So it just kinda happens when it happens and I write when I want to write and that's the way it's going to be or else I wouldn't even be doing this.

For me going solo meant freedom to collaborate and do whatever I feel I'm good at doing. For me it was really not ever expanding as an artist, developing everything from my songwriting to my singing to my mission statement to my vision. I've been so inspired by all the creative freedom that it brings that I have no complaints.

What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That's why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it.

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

I was being musically mentored by a lot of people who were obviously more talented and skilled than I was, and I thought that I would just kind of learn the ropes of songwriting there - like how to do acoustic, country-esque songs, which I like because there's so much story in them.

Chuck is definitely my favorite co-writer, and my best. It is really hard to make yourself vulnerable enough for somebody to get inside your head while songwriting. Chuck and I find writing together very non-competitive and just really easy.

A pretty pivotal moment for me was having a songwriting class with Paul McCartney when I was at LIPA, and then being called in a few days later by the headmaster of the school to tell me that Paul McCartney likes what I'm doing.

This goes for our songwriting as well as our success as a band - the minute we stopped chasing what we thought people wanted to hear and started writing things that moved us, that's when people started paying attention.

When I was 18, I took a trip to Thailand with a friend. We stayed for a month. Bangkok was very raw for a teenager: there were no cellphones, no Internet, and the only music I had with me was this cassette by Liz Phair. I was writing a lot of poetry, and she embodied a talky style of songwriting that I found very accessible.

Folk music is not for a select group of people who feel that maybe he taught them about this music and that it belongs to them. It doesn't belong only to them. It belongs to everyone who's interested in the blueprints of good songwriting.

I've been making electronic music since I was 12. I was making music as soon as I knew how to make sounds on a piano. My parents had a baby grand, and the piano is still my favorite instrument. I look at it as a songwriting machine.

Linkin Park has been a band for such a long time, for me, in my eyes. I was 16 years old when I first heard them. I heard 'Hybrid Theory,' and I was floored at what I was listening to. It was angry yet melodic, it had hip-hop and it had - it was just different, good. Good songwriting.

Before I'd even started doing music or having opportunities with my own music, I was studying production and business and stuff anyway. I knew there were so many jobs within the music industry - songwriting or session playing or working at a label - and I was really interested in how it all works.

I think of the Tycho sound as something separate from the band. I think the methodology and approach to production I use on the Tycho records can be applied to a lot of things. But from a performance and songwriting perspective, yes, Tycho is a live band.

I stand firm behind the belief that, for me, songwriting isn't something that I do or command, it happens to me. I can either choose to stop and acknowledge it, or put it off and hope that it won't fade away. 'That Wasn't Me' is no exception - it came together more quickly than any other song I have ever constructed on my own.

Insatiable,' the album, was more of a project, really... it was more like a songwriting excursion and an exclusive deal that hadn't really ever been done that often before... me being like, 'ooh I'm an entrepreneur,' rather than 'this is my singing career.'

The only thing I could see myself doing is music - songwriting or producing or something. I've never seen myself being in any other business, I've been working in this one since I was 5 years old! I could do other things, but I wouldn't want to.

My voice is very country, and my songwriting is very country.

In terms of songwriting I think it might be a circular thing. I tend to go back and forth between quieter melancholy songs and more forceful, less traditional structures. I think when I find myself leaning too far in one direction I kind of rebel against it and pull the other way.

'If Our Love Is Wrong' is, quite simply, my coming out song, as I was trying to wrap my head around my sexuality and was starting to learn about songwriting, and that my honesty and my authenticity came from my personal experiences and writing about stuff that genuinely bugged me or upset me.

In a basic music way, my sense of melody and my style of songwriting and production carry the same thought process into the new music. I'm thinking about machines and electronics, and how they interact with motion, which I've touched upon in the past. Those key themes are my main interests, and they are really the foundation for my approach to music.

I guess songwriting has become a little more difficult for me over the years or maybe I regard it in a different light because I'm a little more critical of the songs that I write, so I take my time with them, which means I don't sit down and overly struggle with a song or overwork it.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

Even though, theoretically, being a composer and being a songwriter are the same thing, in my brain, they are completely different. When I am in my composing mode, I go into my studio and turn that part of my brain on like a faucet. And when I finish, I turn it off. But with songwriting, that process is much more elusive.

I love when rappers have a off-beat, very abstract timing, and he certainly did.And any rapper who really approaches rapping with the art form of songwriting melodically - I know a bunch of rappers who actually go in before they write the lyrics and come up with the melody. And you can hear and feel that difference so much when that's the case.

But if you want to be a songwriter-based musician, whether you play punk or rock or country or jazz, whatever, you have to work on your songwriting and you have to work on being able to play in front of people, I think. That performance is how you create the groundwork for a lasting career.

I think the most important thing to remember is that pain passes. And artistically, the pain is going to pass. It's what you want to express out of the pain as opposed to indulging in the agony-and-pain mantra of songwriting that became such a hit in the '90s and still, all the way up to now.

The Grime guys have kind of rewritten the blueprint for people as far as creativity, songwriting, ownership, doing your own videos... So they're sending out a real positive message I think to people, that you can do it yourself in a punk way, and you can still potentially be successful and get to people.

I'm doing more deep listening, which is part of the role or job of the songwriter. I think with a lot of songwriting, songs sing themselves to you tonally and also lyrically. And it's not necessarily your own visual memories that are writing the song. It's like there are words that you can catch out there and you have to be able to see and hear them.

I don't know exactly where the ideas come from, but when I get into a songwriting mode and it's coming along, it's like you're on the front end of a boat and you're going through the water, and the breeze is blowing through your hair and the water's smooth, and you're going out to sea. I love that feeling.

I think Bob Dylan showed us that songs can rise to the level of literature, and he proved it over and over again. That's why they keep trying to get him a Nobel Prize for literature: because there is no Nobel Prize for songwriting.

I think music moves me more than other people. I can hear a song and it can bring me to tears. It doesn't happen the whole time, but I find songwriting - songs - very, very moving. I always have and I don't think it's fading.

The rule of songwriting: say what you want to say, say it again, say it a different way, then say it again.

I think that's always the hope - I mean, I can't speak for others, but I think other artists, no matter what type of medium they are using - whether it be from painting to acting to dancing, songwriting, or anything like that - I believe the desire is to get to the truth, and I think it's really hard to tell the truth.

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.

'Insatiable', the album, was more of a project, really... it was more like a songwriting excursion and an exclusive deal that hadn't really ever been done that often before... me being like, 'ooh I'm an entrepreneur', rather than 'this is my singing career'.

Maybe I feel like I'm writing songs that don't need to be saved or made more interesting by endless overdubs and studio tricks...maybe - remember, where I am with songwriting I have never been before - sparkly guitars and overdubs I've done (and will do again - see instrumental record in above answer)

I got signed with the songwriting deal when I was sixteen and they were really great - my publishers, who to this day are still my publishers and are like my musical family, my second family - they took me in and taught me what a good song is.

For instance, I may bring a certain feminist perspective to my songwriting, because that's how I see life. I'm interested in art, poetry, and music. As that kind of artist, I can do anything. I can say anything. It's about self-expression. It knows no package - there's no such thing. That's what being an artist is.

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

I love my complexion, but like so many of us, in the early years at primary school, I grew up thinking that my dark skin wasn't a great thing. I've found freedom in music and songwriting, which has given me a freedom in how I present myself. I'm glad I've got makeup to celebrate that with.

George Harrison is perhaps one of the most creative people I ever met, not only in his music and songwriting, but just the way he lived his life, decorated his gardens and homes. He was a dear friend of mine. His entire approach to music was very unique.