Quotes About Songwriting

#1. I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song.

Amanda McBroom

#2. I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.

Kate Bush

#3. With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.

Alanis Morissette

#4. For me, it's good to have those dissimilar modes of songwriting sit side-by-side on a record, because they yield such different results.

David Grubbs

#5. At 18, I got a publishing deal, so I was like, 'I can do this for real and not go to college.' When I was a teenager, my parents dragged me to a lot of songwriting conventions.

Meghan Trainor

#6. The songwriting has never really stepped forward from the '50's.

Brian Setzer

#7. The trick to songwriting is writing in a poetic enough way that other people can identify with it.

Lights

#8. Canadian Railroad Trilogy is an extremely fine piece of songwriting.

Johnny Cash

#9. 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

#10. Within the songwriting community, there are these unwritten rules for the way that a song should be written in country music, and I think that those rules are constantly being broken over the years, and the molds change and the process is evolving.

Sam Hunt

#11. Location is a very important aspect to songwriting.

Ken Hill

#12. But there's a thin line between songwriting and arranging.

Warren Zevon

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

Taylor Swift

#14. When you're in a songwriting class, and you write a song, and you hand it in to a teacher to grade, I'm still going to say that it's a really awesome song whether I got an A or a D. I learned to stick to my guns and take the tools as tools and not as rules.

Madi Diaz

#15. Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control.

Tracy Chapman

#16. I've always been insecure about my singing. That's why I've focused so much on my songwriting.

Brenda Russell

#17. I write about what I know and what I've experienced. That's the only way it can be real to me. I love songwriting. There is something so satisfying in coming up with an idea and turning it into a song that means something to people ...

Aaron Tippin

#18. 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

#19. Music really does just boil down to basically, essentially songwriting chords and melodies.

Flume

#20. I'm definitely a fan of juxtaposition. Using the most beautiful line to say the most horrific thing - I think one of the main things in songwriting is definitely friction between the words and the melody.

Rufus Wainwright

#21. What I strive to do with songwriting is be really honest, authentic and try to be open and share that with people. I choose that over trying to be clever, poetic, or lyrical.

Brett Dennen

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

Emeli Sande

#23. I think that songwriting is understood from an early age that was the priority to figure out first. Learn to write a good song, and then figure out who you are as an artist because, once you know how to write a good song, you can dress it in any kind of clothing.

Lights

#24. Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough.

David Bowie

#25. I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn't have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don't want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that's really where the work is.

Ryan Adams

#26. At first it was my brother's songwriting and I was just doing what everyone told me.

Gwen Stefani

#27. My lesson from that [songwriting process] was that I should go back to where I was and try to make that first pure even more strong.

Yukimi Nagano

#28. Songwriting is a really fortunate skill to have to frame living and to find new ways to observe things you're going through.

Feist

#29. Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong.

Jimmy Webb

#30. I feel like I'm creeping closer to finding the situation that triggers songwriting, which is obviously an extreme of an emotion.

Laura Marling

#31. The only thing I could see myself doing is music - songwriting or producing or something. I've never seen myself being in any other business, I've been working in this one since I was 5 years old! I could do other things, but I wouldn't want to!

Demi Lovato

#32. 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

#33. I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive ... And since I'm a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it.

Barry Manilow

#34. Songwriting is never one thing. I've spent as long as three months writing a song. Other times I've done it in twenty minutes.

Greg Lake

#35. I like drawing people in the airport or on the bus or in venues. I like catching people in the moment. It's a similar inspiration for me in terms of songwriting.

James Bay

#36. Songwriting is like a therapy, it's a connection that you have with another person, and I'm not scared of it at all for some reason.

Colbie Caillat

#37. To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

Beth Orton

#38. As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.

Rosanne Cash

#39. Pop music really is a love and a joy and a science [of songwriting].

Halsey

#40. Usually the things that happen in my life are an easy trigger for songwriting.

Coeur De Pirate

#41. Songwriting becomes a conscious attempt to delve into the unconscious. Even those writers who scoff at the concept of a spiritual source for their songs admit that the phenomenon of having them simply arrive feels magical.

Paul Zollo

#42. Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.

Andrew Bird

#43. Songwriting is as much a craft as a talent.

Tom T. Hall

#44. Music is entirely subjective. I was thinking that for myself, for songwriting and what I like to listen to, to help motivate me as a songwriter, as a musician, there are certain things I lean towards and certain things I don't.

Marnie Stern

#45. Songwriting is actually a really great outlet. I kind of recommend it. You get to sum up whatever is going on in your life in a song, then perform it really passionately.

Bridgit Mendler

#46. I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ.

Bat For Lashes

#47. My songwriting has evolved, just as I've evolved as a person.

John Oates

#48. Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.

Sean Lennon

#49. I do more writing by myself than with anybody else. My best thing is sitting ... around somewhere with a guitar, and having an idea. You never know where it'd come from. Songwriting is a God-given talent.

Charlie Daniels

#50. I think songwriting is the ultimate form of being able to make anything that happens in your life productive.

Taylor Swift

#51. I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.

Carly Simon

#52. Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's (Thompson) songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good.

David Byrne

#53. Songwriting is a bitch. And then it has puppies

Steven Tyler

#54. When a lot of musicians change styles, their songwriting suffers because they want to be different.

Noel Gallagher

#55. There's been many times when a producer will say, 'I don't think you want to say that.' We were told we shouldn't be so brutally honest about songwriting or radio or the industry.

Tyler Joseph

#56. With acting I am being led by the script, other actors, the director, etc. But with songwriting I feel it is much more self reliant and allows me to be in the creative experience without being as dependent on others.

Helen Slater

#57. I can't get enough of this guy called Baths. He's a total L.A. dude and really young as well. It's super-electronic, but with almost Hall & Oates-style songwriting. Without the context of the production, it could be super-cheesy, but it has amazing harmonies.

Jamie Cullum

#58. Please rehearse new material," Brian's telegram said. They chose to interpret this as "please write new material" and, in this instant, the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership was effectively reborn.

Mark Lewisohn

#59. If I don't have an outlet in which to express myself ... throug h songwriting or other mediums ... I get a bit jittery.

Laura Marling

#60. My head translates emotions into song. Songwriting is cathartic for me.

Antoniette Costa

#61. I always said I would have gone in to psychology, or maybe the FBI. I'm really in to and interested in humans and their minds and emotions. I think that's another reason I like songwriting. It's amazing the stories you can tell about someone, just from a little people watching

Jessica Harp

#62. Songwriting can be cathartic, but then you just keep it private. If you're going to play out and have other people listen to you, then you need to make sure there's some point to what you're saying.

Patterson Hood

#63. Well, our songwriting process is pretty collective.

Adam Rich

#64. I think topical songwriting is a real gift, and it's hard not to be pedantic and show up with the sledgehammer message.

Mary Chapin Carpenter

#65. I wasn't born with a natural talent for songwriting.

Natalie Imbruglia

#66. I have a weird life because I live on songwriting royalties, which are a strange income. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't.

Joe Strummer

#67. (Songwriting) It's a gift. It all comes from somewhere. I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience.

Willie Nelson

#68. Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

Hunter Hayes

#69. When I recorded my solo album, 'Keep It Hid,' in 2008, I'd gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language.

Dan Auerbach

#70. There's a standard of songwriting that, when you start immersing yourself in those types of songs, it raises your own bar as a songwriter. There's also simplicity in the songwriting. It's much harder to be simple than it is to be complicated.

Sinead O'Connor

#71. I'm passionate about the empowerment and healing of girls and women. Where I do the most work in that regard is in my songwriting.

India.Arie

#72. I attended a post-college program in L.A. for Music Business and Production. Took several courses involving Music Production, Arrangement, and Songwriting.

Adam Kluger

#73. Songwriting is the way of perpetual want. Songwriters are the blessed/cursed people. You will never have a moment's peace in your life. You will always be wanting the next song.

Jon Stewart

#74. I couldn't say there is a formula to songwriting. Each time is a unique experience.

Greg Lake

#75. Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

Neil Diamond

#76. Songwriting is an art distinct from poetry.

Nick Hornby

#77. I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.

Glenn Hughes

#78. I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.

Mick Jagger

#79. Songwriting is determined by me, man ... just me. I write from real life, you ...

T-Pain

#80. I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.

Michael Gira

#81. Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing.

Mark Knopfler

#82. The music and the philosophy feed off of one another on a subconscious level, though I've never really integrated my academic teaching into songwriting. But what they have in common is that they're both ways to tap into the mysterious parts of our world.

Steve Weinstein

#83. I am really heavy into songwriting.

Teyana Taylor

#84. 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

#85. The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.

Tim Finn

#86. I've done so much songwriting and I know how to do it.

Ester Dean

#87. Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

Barry Mann

#88. No one can attack you when you're songwriting; it's you and a song, which is a great place to be.

Gin Wigmore

#89. Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.

Tom Waits

#90. I was able to apply ukulele to whatever I'm trying to write. It's become part of songwriting for me, the knowledge I gained from hearing the melodies come out, and then applying that to guitar or vocals.

Eddie Vedder

#91. I've always gravitated towards songwriting that happens easily and spontaneously, because those have always been my best songs.

Jane Wiedlin

#92. 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

#93. I often say songwriting is like trying to climb down a ladder at night. You put your foot on the next rung and test it out and make sure it holds and then you reach for the next one.

Crowder

#94. When you're songwriting, it's like talking about your own life experience. When you're with a band, you have to compromise.

Timothy B. Schmit

#95. I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.

Bruce Cockburn

#96. People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.

John Darnielle

#97. My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

Dave Grohl

#98. 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

#99. I wake up in the morning, or the middle of the night when an idea comes through. My songwriting style, basically I just write down information given to me from the muse and how that works for songwriters. Record the muse and the muse delivers.

Creed Bratton

#100. Not that there is anything wrong with confessional songwriting, there are plenty of people that do that I admire. I think it is great, it just isn't how I do things.

Zooey Deschanel