Songwriting Quotes - Page 21

• I knew I could make money from songwriting, so how much and when was not really the question.

  Ryan Tedder

  Making Money

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

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• 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.

  Alex Ebert

  Pain, Thinking, Agony

  "Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• People think once you get famous and rich you move out of the public sphere and you have nothing left to write about. I've heard that - Bruce Springsteen was this real street boy, now he's got this big house. How does that compute? If you don't look at the material side of someone's life, if you look at more the emotional side, there's always a wealth of stuff to write about.

  Paul McCartney

  Real, Moving, Writing

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• When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive.

  Etgar Keret

  Dream, Writing, Thinking

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• I blame it [never taking a break] on my mother. She was a born entertainer. Leave the songwriting, the singing and all that behind, and I still would have found some way to be an entertainer. I would have never been an actress, though, because I realized early in my life, in like sixth grade, I was a terrible actress.

  Stevie Nicks

  Mother, Singing, Way

  Source: www.usmagazine.com

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• I see God as a song-and-dance man. If I had my way, he'd be able to carry a tune, too. Preferably, one of mine.

  Kevin Kline

  Song, Writing, Men

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• Johnny Cash's face belongs on Mount Rushmore...I don't write as much as I did back when I was writing songs every day. I've come to know when I've got a good one, although sometimes it takes the world awhile to catch up with me...If you're in it because you love it and you have to do it, that's the right reason. If you're in it because you want to get rich or famous, don't do it.

  Kris Kristofferson

  Song, Writing, World

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• What I do now is all my dad's fault, because he bought me a guitar as a boy, for no apparent reason. ... I wrote some of my best love songs ever when I was unhappy and my saddest love songs when I was very much in love. When I wrote 'You're in My Heart', which is an uplifting song, I had just broken up with-Now who had I broken up with?. ... Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It's the image, not what you sing.

  Rod Stewart

  Uplifting, Song, Best Love

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• I don't try to approach things any differently, songwriting-wise, regardless of what I'm doing. I try to write whatever the best thing is that I'm doing that day. If I'm working on a pop song, I'm working on a pop song to the best of my ability. If I'm working on a bluegrass song, it's the same thing. They're not really different parts of the brain.

  Chris Stapleton

  Wise, Song, Writing

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• I got into songwriting because I'm not very good at communicating sometimes, just my true words, so music was always my way of expressing myself and being able to put things into lyrics that I couldn't say necessarily in my everyday life.

  LIZ

  Everyday, Able, Way

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• My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

  Taylor Swift

  Stories, My Own, My Own Life

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• 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.

  Robert Greenblatt

  Jobs, Character, Years

  Source: collider.com

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• Songwriting is a mystery. And it's a mystery to me that it's a mystery. But that sounds stupid.

  Neil Finn

  Stupid, Sound, Mystery

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• I feel like when the songwriting slows, I'd love to help others with their records. If it's something I really believe in, it's worth the effort.

  Mark Kozelek

  Believe, Helping Others, Effort

  Interview with Brandon Stosuy, pitchfork.com. February 3, 2014.

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• 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.

  William Clark Green

  Blessed, Writing, People

  Source: maroonweekly.com

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• I learned so much about music by playing this little, miniature songwriting machine [ukulele], especially about melody. The motto is less strings more melody.

  Eddie Vedder

  Ukulele, Machines, Littles

  Source: www.twofeetthick.com

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• All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

  Townes Van Zandt

  Song, Writing, Guitar

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• I'm fascinated by America...it's so odd.

  John Prine

  America, Odd, Fascinated

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• 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.

  Billy Bob Thornton

  Thinking, Stories, Singers

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• Opportunities may come along for you to convert something - something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it.

  Bob Dylan

  Opportunity, May, Might

  "Chronicles: Volume One". Book by Bob Dylan, 2004.

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• A lot of my writing is not terribly civilized. Sometimes I listen to songs by very smart writers who assume that the world is a civil place with certain formalities that people follow, but I don't see things that way. My own experience tells me that life is not like that. That's why I write the way I do.

  Suzanne Vega

  Song, Smart, Writing

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• You're never quite sure where the song is going, because you might not find the word to rhyme with the end of the line. You have to find associative meaning to get you there. So it's rather like doing a crossword puzzle backwards. A kind of strange, three-dimensional, abstract crossword puzzle.

  Annie Lennox

  Song, Three, Lines

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• I became very aware of what I was used to relying on, almost tricks. It's funny because I could feel myself creating a formula and sticking with it and I just told myself, 'That's not me, that's not really how I am, god forbid I have developed a formula - it's music; songwriting.' It's heretic, honestly, in the church of music, so I had to unwind a few tricks in order to get past it.

  Zach Condon

  Past, Order, Creating

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• Is rule of thumb in writing game: if story requires many long descriptions of smells so vile that will give reader nausea, is not likely to find publisher.

  Dean Koontz

  Writing, Games, Smell

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• The gateway to freedom...was somewhere close to New Orleans where most Africans were sorted through and sold. I had driven through New Orleans on tour and I'd been told my great grandfather had lived way back up in the woods among the evergreens in a log cabin. I revived the era with a song about a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode. My first thought was to make his life follow as my own had come along, but I thought it would seem biased to white fans to say 'coloured boy' and changed it to 'country boy'.

  Chuck Berry

  Country, Song, Boys

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