Quotes about songwriting
Charlotte Eriksson - Empty Roads & Broken Bottles; in search for The Great Perhaps
I didn't do music to live I lived so that I could do music.
Criss Jami - Killosophy
I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.
Criss Jami - Killosophy
I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.
Criss Jami - Electric Personality
A steampunk nationBaby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'causeOur art's official and only partially artificialAnd our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal butThere's not where it settlesBecause it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettleAnd now we face it, this creation we made toTo save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it'sOur safeway they make into a pathetic revelationIn our steampunk nationOur steampunk nation
Kastle King -
The best songs are written through our anger. Even though feelings change over time, our lyrics will always remain inside the song as a way of reminding us how far and how much stronger we've become since then.
George Harrison - The Beatles Anthology
I'm sitting here doing nothing but ageing while my guitar gently weeps
Carole Bayer Sager - They're Playing Our Song
I’ve always thought the best songs come though us not from us…. They gave me life, they gave me an identity and I gave them my tears, my heart, and my truth.
David Byrne - How Music Works
Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a song written by a team, a listener can sense that they aren't hearing an expression of a solitary individual's pain or joy, but that of a virtual conjoined person? Can we tell that an individual singer might actually represent a collective, that he might have multiple identities? Does that make the sentiments expressed more poetically universal? Dan eliminating some portion of the authorial voice m
Christina Westover -
Sometimes I just want to paint the words "It's my fault" across my forehead to save people the time of being pissed off at me.
Jimmy Buffett - A Pirate Looks at Fifty
Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.
Steven Tyler -
Songwriting is a bitch. And then it has puppies
Jon Skovron - Struts & Frets
I tried to look at writing a song almost like solving a mystery. The song was there, buried somewhere in my brain. All I had to do was follow the clues until I figured it out.
Taylor Swift -
You’re going to have people who are going to say ‘Oh, you know like, she just writes songs about her ex-boyfriends’ and I think frankly that’s a very sexist angle to take. No one says that about Ed Sheeran. No one says it about Bruno Mars. They’re all writing songs about their exes, their current girlfriends, their love-life, and no one raises a red flag there.
Don Van Vliet -
Well, the gold fish in the bowl lay upside down bloatingFull in the sky and the plains were bleached white with skeletonsVarious species grouped together accordingTo their past beliefsThe only way they ever all got together wasNot in love but shameful grief
Charlotte Eriksson -
... but I believe that music can change a life, because it changed mine.
Criss Jami - Venus in Arms
If I knew what to doI'd do more than write a song for you
Criss Jami - Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Leonard Cohen -
so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...So ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in.
Jeff Bowen -
I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing.
Pat Pattison -
I hereby grant you permission to write crap. The more the better. Remember, crap makes the best fertilizer.
Criss Jami - Killosophy
Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.
Nick Hornby - Naked
Of course Tucker Crowe was in pain when he made [the record], but he couldn't just march into a recording studio and start howling. He'd have sounded mad and pathetic. He had to calm the rage, tame it and shape it so that it could be contained in the tight-fitting songs. Then he had to dress it up so that it sounded more like itself.
Charlotte Eriksson -
Why I write music? Because it hurts not to.
Stephen Sondheim - Whines
Unless the object of the singer’s affection is a vampire, surely what Hart means is unphotogenic. Only vampires are unphotographable, but affectionate ‘-enic’ rhymes are hard to come by.
Criss Jami - Killosophy
I've finally decided to write about profit for a changeBut before I really started I already started to feel lameBaby what's it to a beast who manely to money remains untamed
Kyle Morton -
When someone asks me what a song is about, it’s like, I feel like I might ruin it if you ask me that. I feel like I did my best to explain the song in the song on its own terms as a song.
Sia -
I have big dreams. I want to keep songwriting. Direct films. Be a parent.
Bob Dylan - Vol. 1
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. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have
Carrie Newcomer -
Something good happened to my writing when stopped being afraid to do something simple, for the fear that people might think I couldn’t do something more complex. Don’t be confused by the word simple. Simple is not easy, it is clear voiced, and fearlessly elegant.
Jimmy Webb - Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting
A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.' It is 'sentimentality' that is to be avoided, like the fiddleback spider, being as it is 'the quality or state of being sentimental to excess or in affectation.' Again we are faced with a judgement call and must keep a sharp ey
Don Van Vliet -
Well, the way you'd been, old ladyI could see the fear in your windowsUnder your furry crawling browA silver bow rings up in inchesYou were afraid you'd be the devil's red wifeBut it's alright, God dug your danceAnd would have you young and in his harum
Criss Jami - Killosophy
Is the phrase 'pay' or 'play the piper'I inquire, why'Cause I admire a desire to flip the switchYeah make a way to face the music likeLife savings for a mosh pit riotListen to a mixRock the tickets, higher volumeVelocity which shakes a cockpit's pilot
Criss Jami - Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
Walk and loveWe're walking in loveFor the walk of love