Songwriting Quotes - Page 16

• I've gone a year and not written a song just because I couldn't think of anything. But I always come back to it because there's always that little buzz you get when you do something well and sing it out loud to the public. And people clap and tell you how great you are.

  Guy Clark

  Song, Writing, Thinking

  18 Copy quote

• When you write a song it's sometimes in a desperate moment whn you can't really articulate it. What I love about lyrics is what T.S. Eliot said: 'Good poetry is felt before it is heard.' I'm a believer in that. It's those moments when you sit yourself down, and talk to yourself in the mirror.

  Marcus Mumford

  Song, Writing, Mirrors

  4 Copy quote

• It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to.

  Scott Avett

  Song, Writing, Ideas

  5 Copy quote

• All the songs that were written for that album are just all our first sophomore songs. So they're all from real life. Very sweet and very innocent. I think the theme of the album probably was just that it was our first record. ... Back when we were first making records, you didn't just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing.

  Cat Stevens

  Song, Sweet, Real

  8 Copy quote

• I really don't know what exactly all the songs mean. Sometimes other people have meanings and when I hear them I think, 'That's really a better meaning than I thought, and perfectly valid, given the words that exist.' So part of what makes a song really good is that people take in different meanings, and they apply them, and they might be more powerful than the ones I'm thinking.

  Paul Simon

  Song, Powerful, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• I don't really like to write at a desk. I like to write when driving in a car. ... Once you're working on it, you're working on it all the time, and sometimes stuff'll come in the middle of the night, in a dream or something. Your mind is working on it all the time.

  Paul Simon

  Dream, Writing, Night

  4 Copy quote

• I sort of recognize it, as opposed to shaping it. Oh, that's a good idea, that's a good line. I wonder where I can use that. And when you get into a rhyme group like 'not,' you got a lot of rhymes, you got a lot of choices. The more you do it, the luckier you get.

  Paul Simon

  Writing, Ideas, Choices

  4 Copy quote

• I just said, you know, this is a great track but this lyric, I don't believe it. It sounds like I'm trying to say something, instead of it naturally coming out of me, like I was saying something that I already knew. Anyway, I can't remember what it was. And either I threw it all out or I threw 90 percent of it out, and kept a line or two. That's happened a couple of times to me. Not too often, but a couple of times. Very aggravating when it does happen.

  Paul Simon

  Couple, Believe, Writing

  11 Copy quote

• Write down the thoughts and even more, write down a specific line. If you don't, it'll fly away forever.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Forever, Lines

  5 Copy quote

• Years ago when I was in a cover band and we were playing dances, that was quite a different thing. You were there as part of an event. When you're a songwriter, you are the event. So it's a little bit of a different focus.

  Andy Wilkinson

  Writing, Years, Focus

  4 Copy quote

• People like to say their songs are like children, but you gotta get those kids out there so they can make some money and pay the rent.

  Amanda Shires

  Song, Children, Writing

  5 Copy quote

• The last thinkg I want to do is spend the rest of my life pretending to be 17 or 27. Now it's pretty interesting to me to see what can be said in the point of view of where I am now.

  Tristen Gaspadarek

  Writing, Views, Interesting

  4 Copy quote

• I was writing "Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.

  Joan Baez

  Song, Writing, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• That's the essence of songcraft: making something everyone can understand yet it still sounds new.

  Tristen Gaspadarek

  Writing, Essence, Sound

  5 Copy quote

• For me songwriting is very...it's almost like an accident. 'Oh I accidentally wrote about that.' I sit down with the urge to write a song and then afterward it turns out being really personal. I get really overwhelmed by how I feel a lot and sometimes - I feel like my body and my brain can't deal with all the different emotions and I feel like I'm just going to explode.

  Jessica Lea Mayfield

  Song, Writing, Being Real

  4 Copy quote

• Things musicals taught me: All your problems will go away if you sing about it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Going Away, Taught

  5 Copy quote

• By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.

  Steve Earle

  Song, Writing, Cds

  4 Copy quote

• Miranda Lambert is actually mixing the singer-songwriter philosophy with the commercial country [mindset]. And I find it just inspiring. My hat's off completely, because she's pulling it off, and I couldn't figure out a way to do it.

  Allison Moorer

  Country, Philosophy, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• I just feel like it's easier to co-write sometimes, especially if you have chemistry with somebody. It kind of takes all the pressure off of you. But, you know, I started writing songs by myself. I didn't really have a co-writer, besides my dad. When I see a record and it has a song on it that someone wrote [alone], I just really believe in them as a writer. I feel like it's a window into them, more than it is if you write a song with someone else.

  Miranda Lambert

  Song, Dad, Believe

  5 Copy quote

• People just didn't write songs that were so directly emotional in those days. They still don't. Part of Hank's [Williams] thing was that he was opening up about relationships between men and women in ways that nobody else did, and I think that's something that made him stand out so much. His songs are just so straightforward about these really deep feelings that are universal, but they're so hard to write about without sounding sappy or over the top. You think of men in that era - they didn't express themselves that way.

  Michael McCaul

  Song, Writing, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Most of the time, when I had hits as a soloist - maybe not so much with Simon & Garfunkel - I was surprised they were hits. I didn't know what the hits were. I never thought that 'Loves Me Like A Rock' was going to be a hit, or 'Mother And Child Reunion,' or '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.' They didn't sound like what the hits sounded like at the time. Radio was more open to things that weren't exactly what every other hit was.

  Paul Simon

  Mother, Children, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• You can find me in the melodies, the chord progressions, the song style and structure. The lyrical places you fine me most are in the lyrics that 'show' more than 'tell.' I like to describe what the listener is seeing and let them make up the middle rather than telling them.

  Kristian Bush

  Song, Writing, Style

  4 Copy quote

• The melodies were melodies that anybody could sing or hum or whistle. And the words were just about that simple. I think the stories Hank told in his song fit so many people. Nearly everybody in the audience acted as if Hank were singin to them alone.

  Don Helms

  Song, Writing, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think I have any right to say I belong to that [Woody Guthrie/Bob Dylan tradition]. I think that's something that eventually maybe you get inducted into. I'm just experimenting.

  Justin Townes Earle

  Writing, Thinking, Bob

  4 Copy quote

• There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas.

  Diane Setterfield

  Single Mom, Writing, Ideas

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.416, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source