Great Songwriters Quotes

#1. I keep reading about people who want to be famous - it's not that they want to be great songwriters or great actors, they want to be celebrities. That is scary because you can be famous doing some really stupid things.

Barry Manilow

#2. I know great songwriters. Fred Neil would come up when he was in L.A., we all used to hang out. He would sit there and sing, and we would just melt. I mean, we would go to his recording sessions.

Barry McGuire

#3. Anyone who knows the history of the Pete Best Band or the Combo, we were on the verge of breaking in in America. In the mid-'60s, I had great songwriters; we wrote some great stuff.

Pete Best

#4. I grew up with singers. My father's mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can't remember a time there wasn't music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters - George Gershwin, Cole Porter - and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.

J. D. Souther

#5. I'm always looking for great songs, and not being much of a songwriter, I depend on great songwriters to send them to me. I go through tons of stuff, and sometimes you just find material that kind of fits and becomes something special.

George Strait

#6. I'm wearing out this new Coal Men record. I think it's masterful start-to-finish. Dave Coleman is one of Americana music's great songwriters, and I hope this record gets the attention it deserves.

Todd Snider

#7. I can only say thank you and thanks also to all of the great songwriters who wrote those wonderful songs that became number ones.

George Strait

#8. The '60s was a magical time in the music business. So much creativity and talent. I think a lot of it came from the fact that we had grown up before rock n' roll. We listened to all the great songwriters and big bands, songs with great lyrics and melodies. I think that really influenced everybody.

Frankie Valli

#9. There are so many great songwriters that I love and respect, it's an honor to get the opportunity to sing any of their songs.

Sonny Burgess

#10. A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.

Mike Gordon

#11. I've just always been around great songwriters. To me, they were the standard.

Leon Bridges

#12. I think people who are artists, actors, singers, great songwriters, they tend to have a hyper state of emotion where they feel things very, very deeply, probably more deeply than the average person walking down the street where it may affect them, but not to the same extent.

Willie Aames

#13. Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

Amy Winehouse

#14. Randy Newman and I grew up together in Los Angeles. We are both products of the film studio era. Randy is one of the great songwriters of our time and one of the fun people to be with.

Leonard Slatkin

#15. You know, there's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.

Jason Mraz

#16. I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters.

Mick Taylor

#17. A part of me is always envious of people who live in the present and are sustained by a sense of spontaneity. Even dogs have that capacity: they're always wanting to participate in something, and I don't often have that element in me.

Peter Shaffer

#18. We teach young kids from 8 to 14 or 15 about their musical heritage through great songs written by American songwriters. We don't do too many modern composers, although we include songs from Billy Joel and other writers like him.

Margaret Whiting

#19. I can remember sitting in a cabin outside of Denver writing that with a can of soup on the stove.

Gordon Lightfoot

#20. When I read the Bible, the Bible criticizes me, I don't criticize the Bible.

R.C. Sproul

#21. Nashville is one of the greatest places for the best songwriters in the world. It's been fantastic to live there and to raise our family there. It's a great town.

Faith Hill

#22. I've done different conventions and had smaller roles in different sci-fi things.

Brigid Brannagh

#23. It's funny, I think after you are a star like Sting and you no longer think you need any guidance or aid - it would be great to see those stars work with other songwriters.

Meshell Ndegeocello

#24. My melon soul
Crushed by your Gallagher of apathy

David Wong

#25. I think our storytellers - our songwriters should be great storytellers, and they should be mountain climbers and explorers, because music is something that can cross all different borders.

Jason Mraz

#26. I like this town, it's really great. They've put me in The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. This town is about music. It's about the kind of music I like.

Otis Blackwell

#27. The question you should be asking isn't, "What do I want?" or "What are my goals?" but "What would excite me?

Timothy Ferriss

#28. The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.

Mahatma Gandhi

#29. It's amazing how a truly great songwriter can touch anyone in the world with their words.

Christina Aguilera

#30. They're great instrumentalists, singers and songwriters and they have this unique way of blending contemporary with traditional. The result is this beautiful mix of timeless music.

Cindy Cashdollar

#31. There are people who are great technical players like Eric Clapton, and there are people who are great intuitive songwriters like Daniel Johnston. There are sometimes people who are great at both the technique and the creativity, the two sides of the coin, maybe Jimi Hendrix.

Jeffrey Lewis

#32. I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.

Luke Bryan

#33. Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.

Allegra Goodman

#34. Pete Rose has three thousand hits and three thousand fourteen overall.

Jerry Coleman

#35. Journalists couldn't do their jobs overseas without taking risks, and the same is true for diplomats and intelligence officers.

David Ignatius

#36. My mother had a great vinyl collection, and she was constantly playing female singer-songwriters. I first learned about classic song structures by listening to them, and Laura Nyro particularly stood out. Her voice was outside what you'd usually hear on the radio; that really appealed to me.

Jenny Lewis

#37. The music industry is not what it used to be. Being in a good band is great, and I've been lucky to be in great bands. I've done solo stuff, and that's been great. I also produce rock bands and I do co-writes, where I write with different singers in bands and songwriters.

James Iha

#38. 17You, LORD, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, 18defending the fatherless and the oppressed, so that mere earthly mortals will never again strike terror.

Anonymous

#39. Text is just ink on a page until a reader comes along and gives it life.

Louise Rosenblatt

#40. Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?

Kobo Abe

#41. No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula ... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

Lauren Mayberry