Songwriting Quotes - Page 24

• With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.

  Carrie Brownstein

  Together, Form, Process

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• Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.

  Jakob Dylan

  Thinking, Wind, People

  "Women and Country: A Conversation with Jakob Dylan and More". Interview with Mike Ragogna, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 28, 2010.

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• 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.

  Barry Manilow

  Opportunity, Missing, Sound

  "Barry Manilow On Singing Standards And His Real Job". "Morning Edition" with David Greene, www.npr.org. December 7, 2012.

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• My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury.

  Brandi Carlile

  Rocks, Glam Rock, Two

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• Canadian Railroad Trilogy is an extremely fine piece of songwriting.

  Johnny Cash

  Railroads, Pieces, Trilogies

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• Even when I stop performing or stop making records I won't stop being creative. Songwriting is a good outlet.

  Billy Joel

  Creative, Records, Outlets

  "Q&A WITH BILLY JOEL : 'They See Me as One of Them' : Washed Up? Not to Fans of the Singer's New Album and World Tour". Interview with Dennis Hunt, articles.latimes.com. December 11, 1993.

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• Songwriting is not particularly easy for me. I think it would be easy for me if I didn't have such high restrictions and feelings about what I want my music to be. I'm not precious at all when it comes to producing music and I can bring that to an artist and let them expand their horizons.

  John Congleton

  Artist, Thinking, Feelings

  "John Congleton: Meet Indie Rock's Unsung Hero Of 2011". Interview with Mike Katzif, www.npr.org. December 23, 2011.

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• I get told I'm a confessional songwriter, which gets on my tits because I think of negative connotations attached to the word "confessional". I don't like the idea of songwriting being therapy. I don't want to put myself so directly in the foreground.

  Beth Orton

  Thinking, Ideas, Negative

  Interview with Hector de la Manzana, believermag.com. March 2003.

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• 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.

  Justin Rutledge

  Song, Struggle, Writing

  Source: www.songfacts.com

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• I would only listen to certain things, like a lot of teenagers do. But the Tragically Hip is a ribbon that's been with me pretty much my entire musical life. Every mix tape I ever made had at least one Hip song on it. Right from the outset I feel like Gord Downie built so much room into his songs. There was so much space in them that he created. He made me think of songwriting as full of boundless possibilities in a way that - well, that a lot of songwriters do, but that was the first time I thought a song could really contain multitudes.

  John K. Samson

  Song, Teenager, Thinking

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Melody is the first thing that comes to me when I'm songwriting. I learned piano classically first, and then I went into soul, and so melody has always been the first. It's so important.

  Emeli Sande

  Piano, Soul, Important

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Songwriting is my main thing. I know that I'll do that for the rest of my life.

  Emeli Sande

  Knows

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively-and there were a lot of choices-writing songs was king.

  Jakob Dylan

  Song

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I do look at songwriting as a lot of work. I don't overintellectualize music as a special medium that only some people deserve to do. I think it's something you do if you put the work in.

  Jakob Dylan

  Thinking, People, Special

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I'm pretty critical, but I'm also pretty good at letting go once it's done. There's this existential argument that comes in, at some point, when you're over-thinking the songwriting process. There's no guarantee that the more time you spend or the more you concentrate on certain aspects that that's going to produce a better result, especially in the arts. Some of the most brilliant things that someone might do could happen in three minutes because it's something that just occurs to them.

  Chris Cornell

  Letting Go, Art, Done

  Source: collider.com

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• I think the zenith of popular songwriting to the United States of America was that period that started in the '20s and went into the '50s. It was the period of the great American standard song.

  Linda Ronstadt

  Song, Thinking, America

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.

  Win Butler

  Song, Inspiration, Half

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• 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.

  Jakob Dylan

  People, Select, Music Is

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Artists are not going to put somebody new in the president's chair. It's all worth the effort; it all needs to be done. But I don't look at songwriting as having the ability to necessarily do that today.

  Jakob Dylan

  Artist, Effort, Done

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Listening closely to songs these days, there's a lot of lazy songwriting where people get away with it. I don't want to be too critical about it. But I also feel like I wanted to say something a bit different from just being a musician and singing about yourself. Ultimately, that's not really interesting to me. Even when I was a kid, I was interested in observing people and maybe making my own stories. That kind of reflects in my music.

  Steve Gunn

  Song, Kids, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I get to play with pop music and mix up the style. It's fun to play with party music and nice to get into the club. My big love is songwriting. I write the lyrics and the vocals, and I work with the producers.

  Nomi Ruiz

  Fun, Nice, Party

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• As you get older, your songwriting starts to become less and less about you, and especially when you have kids and a family. You start to see the world through other people's eyes a lot more to the point where it's hard to go back and relate to that "me against the world" perspective that I think a lot of my earlier songs were about. It's not so much about "me against the world," it's, how do you make the best possible future for your kids to grow up in?

  Sam Roberts

  Song, Growing Up, Kids

  Source: www.songfacts.com

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• 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.

  Thalia Zedek

  Song, Thinking, Rebel

  Source: chicago.gopride.com

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• What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

  Steve Earle

  Country, Running, Song

  "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

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• I love analogue tape and I love digital, they both have pluses and minuses and I don't really feel like I have to use one or the other. I love digital because it's really great for songwriting because you can just cut and move choruses around and pull chunks of songs. It's really easy to hear quickly "Oh, maybe the arrangement should be like this."

  Butch Vig

  Song, Moving, Cutting

  Source: brightestyoungthings.com

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