Songwriting Quotes - Page 34

• Musicians always have music in their heads about their perceptions of the world.

  Pattie Boyd

  Writing, Perception, Musician

  18 Copy quote

• When you're home or you're working, your mind just isn't allowed to just roll on like it does when you're watching the scenery go by. You're hurdling through space but you're not really moving. ...It's that dreaminess, that ability to just get dreamy while you're looking out the window and you see something...and it makes you think of something else, and all of a sudden the words are just flowing out of you.

  Pegi Young

  Moving, Home, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• Try to begin things you feel you can do. To begin is enough-there is a boldness in beginning. And in boldness lies genius and magic.

  Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet

  Lying, Writing, Magic

  6 Copy quote

• I do believe we should push each other to write better songs and make better music. We do ourselves a disservice if we sit back and float along the river instead of trying to paddle and guide ourselves to a more creative place.

  Bonnie Baker

  Song, Believe, Writing

  7 Copy quote

• My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.

  Sue Grafton

  Husband, Lying, Book

  5 Copy quote

• I think a lot of my interest in history now isn't so much in places and names and texts and public figures, but more in examining all the nuances and idiosyncrasies of particular stories of everyday people. And if that doesn't happen, then I usually transplant myself and my own stories to a particular historical event. Which is why you'll see me, the first person pronoun, interacting in a song about Carl Sandburg, or you'll find my [sic] interacting with Saul Bellow. It's sort of a re-rendering of history and making it my own.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Song, Writing, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing. ...I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now.

  Bruce Hornsby

  Song, Writing, Years

  7 Copy quote

• I guess when we're happy, it's easier to go with the flow, and when that happiness or joy is interrupted, that's when we get contemplative and break out the guitar or pen and write about it.

  Jeremy Fisher

  Writing, Guitar, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• Kristofferson was writing what was really in his heart and saying it in ways we hadn't heard up till that point.

  Jeffrey Steele

  Writing, Heart, Way

  4 Copy quote

• Hemingway was very sparse in his writing. Kris Kristofferson is like that. He can take four words and say it all.

  Todd Snider

  Writing, Four

  12 Copy quote

• I've always thought that a lot of really good writers go wrong by getting so into the craft and the technique and perfection. Perfection can be the enemy sometimes. Some songs don't need to be told perfectly. Life is messy and has loose ends, and sometimes I think the songs should reflect that.

  Patterson Hood

  Song, Writing, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

• It's not that I have resisted songwriting, it's just not something I felt I have had to do. I've just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt 'I have to sing that song'

  Alison Krauss

  Song, Heard, Felt

  8 Copy quote

• There's this art form in songwriting that's incredibly difficult - to be really funny in a song and also really touching. I can't do that.

  Neko Case

  Song, Art, Touching

  4 Copy quote

• I feel like the inspiration is that I've managed to change my songwriting over the past couple of years and also production styles. I could get a sense of what really worked well, and I think this sound developed naturally. That's what happens when you're doing it all the time and changing as a person. Some songs were really dark, and others were more psychedelic. It was useful to have that to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.

  Marika Hackman

  Song, Couple, Inspiration

  4 Copy quote

• I don't really have a set-in-stone process or formula. Sometimes the melody is there and I have to chase down the lyrics. Sometimes, the song is there and I have to make the melody fit. What I've learned so far about songwriting is that I can't force a song. If I try to do that, it's hollow, and people know a hollow song when they hear it. It's the song they stop listening to and forget about. I'd prefer not to write those kinds of songs.

  Kasey Anderson

  Song, Writing, People

  4 Copy quote

• A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

  Frank Zappa

  Music, Writing, Air

  Frank Zappa, Peter Occhiogrosso (1990). “Real Frank Zappa Book”, p.162, Simon and Schuster

  89 Copy quote

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• What inspires me is anxiety and the quest to try to change things in my life. ...I got addicted to endings and beginnings and to the idea of always moving around. ...Obviously, whenever you're going through something that's the best time to create, if you're going through something amazing, or horrible, or nothing at all you should be creating. Unfortunately the songwriters of today generally torture themselves to make sure they're writing good songs and take it a little too seriously.

  Kevin Drew

  Song, Moving, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• I wrote 'Millie's Cafe' driving out of Ft. Worth, Texas one time. I was in a dust storm in my old bus. Beer inside. It was like a sailboat, you know...we couldn't see anything. Some things about Texas are so different than Ontario. I was just thinking about how different it is from where I live and, you know, whatever happens to inspire a song happened.

  Fred Eaglesmith

  Song, Writing, Beer

  4 Copy quote

• The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn't be able to do that.

  Oscar Peterson

  Music, Order, Play

  FaceBook post by Oscar Peterson from Aug 23, 2010

  74 Copy quote

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• Before I went on stage at Kyle Hutton's Real Life Real Music Festival, I heard one of his songwriting students, Abbey Hirvela, sing; she was in the poet's saddle and riding that horse like she owned it. She was good! I probably ruined her by showing her how to make an E chord without the 3rd though.

  Ray Wylie Hubbard

  Horse, Real, Riding

  7 Copy quote

• When I began writing, it was a cosmic thing: Inspiration! Wham! Short spurts of time when I felt out of touch with reality, temporarily insane and the result: a song!

  Ann Reed

  Song, Inspiration, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Enthusiasm is big. When I write a book, it's a three-year commitment. Toward the end, I'm writing seven days a week, and it's exhausting but thrilling. The only hope is to have some real enthusiasm for the book. ... Above all, you need some strong emotional or personal connection to your material.

  Nathaniel Philbrick

  Strong, Real, Book

  6 Copy quote

• People think I live here on Nantucket and just gaze at the ocean, getting my inspiration. Not so. I work in my basement and gaze out onto a single window that shows me a cement wall. This is a profession, and it's important to have professionalism about the writing.

  Nathaniel Philbrick

  Wall, Ocean, Inspiration

  16 Copy quote

• Something like going to get the newspaper can increase your writing efficiency by taking you away from the material. When I'm doing other things, writing stuff will be swirling around in my head, and sometimes I'll see a new way into the material.

  Nathaniel Philbrick

  Writing, Stuff, Way

  4 Copy quote

• How to avoid cliche at the root of conception? Practice sincerity. If we've come by ... material honestly, through our own personal experience or imagination, we may rightly claim it as our own. ... The way to make material your own is to look for it in yourself. ... It should be a story that only you can tell, as only you can tell it.

  Peter Selgin

  Writing, Practice, Roots

  5 Copy quote