Top 100 Quotes About Songwriting
#1. Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out.
Dolly Parton
#2. I'm just following the Irish tradition of songwriting, the Irish way of life, the human way of life. Cram as much pleasure into life, and rail against the pain you have to suffer as a result. Or scream and rant with the pain, and wait for it to be taken away with beautiful pleasure ...
Shane MacGowan
#3. 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
#4. The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time.
Paul Weller
#5. I think my songwriting has developed over the years. As I get older, I have become less afraid to share real experiences.
Rayvon Owen
#6. I have always written poetry but I have never applied it to songwriting.
Janine Turner
#7. Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this dark quality.
Martin Gore
#8. Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.
Paul Simon
#9. The funny thing is, because I was doing a lot of theater when I was a kid, and a lot of that was musical theater, as I got older I became more interested in acting as a separate entity and music as a separate entity, like songwriting and production and recording and playing music.
Guy Pearce
#10. I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.
Billy Joel
#11. 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.
Criss Jami
#12. I knew that collaborating on songwriting would be difficult for a lot of people, because I was known very much, for my independence and the fact that I wrote these quirky songs that were not typical structure, not typical sound - you know, really original stuff.
Liz Phair
#13. Songwriting is an emotional medium, and rock and roll is an emotional medium.
Will Sheff
#14. I'm more critical of my songwriting than anybody, but I've worked really hard in the last five to 10 years to improve.
Beck
#15. The tricky thing about songwriting is that, more often than not, what you consider to be your best work generates a collective shrug, and something you've simply tossed off bowls people over.
Dan Hill
#16. I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.
James Blake
#17. I learned so much about music by playing this little, miniature songwriting machine [ukulele], especially about melody. The motto is less strings more melody.
Eddie Vedder
#18. Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.
Tommy Shaw
#19. I've never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I've only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.
Taylor Swift
#20. A lot of what has pushed me forward is desire, and I have expressed that in my songwriting - perhaps because it's safer!
Brian Molko
#21. I got signed with the songwriting deal when I was sixteen and they were really great - my publishers, who to this day are still my publishers and are like my musical family, my second family - they took me in and taught me what a good song is.
Lights
#22. If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.
Bono
#23. The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
Nick Cave
#24. I think just letting go is a really good thing to do in many areas of your life, songwriting included.
Ingrid Michaelson
#25. Think back to the early rock n' roll records, and the average record length in the '50s - and well into the '60s - was two and a half minutes. It's very hard to put that much songwriting into two and a half minutes.
J. D. Souther
#26. I do look at songwriting as a lot of work. I don't over-intellectualize 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
#27. I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.
Sinead O'Connor
#28. Songwriting is such an intricate part of me as an artist and as a person; I couldn't just let someone else do it.
Shakira
#29. There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah.
Townes Van Zandt
#30. Upwell is one of the most terrifyingly great bands I have ever known out of Seattle. Their musicianship and songwriting is monstrous ... They're heavy like Soundgarden or Zeppelin with killer female vocals, but with their own unique style.
Jack Endino
#31. Living in war, and being a wartime band, I don't think there's any way that can't somehow influence the songwriting.
Colin Meloy
#32. My passion is more in songwriting than ... in being a star.
Shania Twain
#33. Songwriting is like ... being possessed. You try to go to sleep but the song won't let you.
John Lennon
#34. Traditionally, an engineer is responsible for capturing sound - microphone choice, gear, etc. A producer can have a number of different responsibilities - anything from songwriting to judging performances - setting mood, and (perhaps most importantly) choosing which songs to work on!
Matt Squire
#35. Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn't work that way.
Lou Reed
#36. Songwriting never feels like it's me doing anything consciously except for becoming aware somehow that it's time to let something out, or let something in, depending on how you look at it.
Scout Niblett
#37. The one thing I'm really the most confident in as an artist is my songwriting ability and ear for pop music. I'm really excited to show that off. It was a side that I wasn't able to show on 'American Idol.'
Nick Fradiani
#38. The less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.
Ben Folds
#39. All I know is when I start getting serious about songwriting ... it's like a playground. All responsibilities slip away and you're with your essence. There can be delight there and self-discovery. You can dance there ... I think of it as my serious playground.
Laura Nyro
#40. Songwriting isn't always something that's directly proportionate to the experience.
Amos Lee
#41. I just love singing, songwriting and touring.
Drake Bell
#42. Songwriting is like going to church. I'm connecting to something, and it's rewarding in really important ways. I don't need to share it with anyone to feel good about it.
Juliana Hatfield
#43. Stretched and skewed
Tap of the 8-ball and the cue
Scratches fall through
They are the scars of you
Criss Jami
#45. I don't really know that there's any real rules for songwriting.
Amos Lee
#46. My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.
Boz Scaggs
#47. Songwriting is something that's very daunting until you have your first successful song, I think.
Richie Sambora
#48. When I was 15, all I knew was that I had to be somebody and that I could be somebody. So I exploited the only thing I knew, which was singing and songwriting.
Juan Gabriel
#49. My style of songwriting is influenced by cinema. I'm a frustrated filmmaker. A fan once said to me, 'Girl, you make me see pictures in my head!' and I took that as a great compliment. That's exactly my intention.
Joni Mitchell
#50. My attempt at really doing classic sort of songwriting is Shins stuff.
James Mercer
#51. Songwriting is a very frustrating art form. You have to get on tape exactly what's playing inside your head
Michael Jackson
#52. You need to work at the craft of songwriting, but not only the craft. When I see people working both on themselves and the craft, and they combine those things ... I just go, That's just fabulous.
Fred Eaglesmith
#53. Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.
Jimmy Buffett
#54. Country music was the music I was brought up on. It's the music that's closest to my heart and the music that speaks to me the most, and it's always been a big influence on my own songwriting.
Teddy Thompson
#55. My songwriting process is painful. Songwriting is brilliant. It's a load of fun - when it works. It's really difficult as well.
James Bay
#56. I hereby grant you permission to write crap. The more the better. Remember, crap makes the best fertilizer.
Pat Pattison
#57. I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.
Criss Jami
#58. The jam stuff doesn't appeal to me in general. My newfound love for the Dead came from Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia's songwriting, not the elaborate guitar solos. I'm a song person. Once it starts to break out of that structure and become loopy, it's uninteresting to me.
Colin Meloy
#59. 'Gatekeeper' was sort of my first attempt to put a little bit of a frame and boundaries around songwriting, and try to figure out a way to approach it that had a sort of end result in mind. I haven't written many like that.
Feist
#60. And I look forward to the time when I can become more indulgent with my songwriting. But this band is a family, and it's a process that we have to grow with together.
Stone Gossard
#61. There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.
Nick Cave
#62. Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there.
David Friedman
#63. I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm.
Jack White
#64. For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.
Tom Waits
#65. The music is in the lead here, and a large part of this, I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel a closer bond with the craft of songwriting, stronger than I ever have.
Ben Harper
#66. Obviously I attach myself so much to my songwriting. If I didn't attach myself to that being my sole attribute, then I would be fine with those.
Luke Temple
#67. This little four-string songwriting tool started changing the way I brought songs to the group.
Eddie Vedder
#68. I feel like when the songwriting slows, I'd love to help others with their records. If it's something I really believe in, it's worth the effort.
Mark Kozelek
#69. When you get married and have children, and you start having hits and success and your business starts growing, there's less and less time for songwriting.
Josh Turner
#70. Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.
Criss Jami
#71. There's a big gaping hole in the EDM space for songwriting. It's one thing to learn how to be a great sound designer and become big just on sound design. Especially if you're in the dubstep category, it's like, how much fatter and more interesting can you make those drops.
Steve Aoki
#72. For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn't mean you're fantastic.
Adam Duritz
#73. The rule of songwriting: say what you want to say, say it again, say it a different way, then say it again.
Hunter Hayes
#74. Songwriting was always my 'plan B'. I didn't even know that songwriting was a job until my late teens!
Keri Hilson
#75. In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.
Jason Molina
#76. The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.
Joni Mitchell
#77. Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
James Taylor
#78. My brain never turns off of songwriting. Every conversation, everything I see, I'm just kind of like a sponge and I soak it up.
Dustin Lynch
#79. When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting.
Sheryl Crow
#80. I do feel songwriting is a bit of its own creature and the writerliness of it ... it's freeing. It's good for people who have an innate resistance to any restrictions whatsoever.
Mirah
#81. Songwriting is my true passion and that's what the BMI awards are all about.
Kevin Rudolf
#82. Basically, I'm just a guitar player that figured out I wasn't ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing so I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business.
J.J. Cale
#83. Well, [bluntness in songwriting]'s a lot cheaper than therapy ... There's been a lot of things going on for the past 10 years that I just never really confronted, or used metaphors to do so. This time out I wanted to make sure that everyone knows what I'm talking about and where I'm coming from.
Brent Smith
#84. Sometimes when I'm writing a song I'll get carried away with production when I'm only on the first verse, and that sacrifices the songwriting.
Nina Nesbitt
#85. I love my complexion, but like so many of us, in the early years at primary school, I grew up thinking that my dark skin wasn't a great thing. I've found freedom in music and songwriting, which has given me a freedom in how I present myself. I'm glad I've got makeup to celebrate that with.
Laura Mvula
#86. People think of songwriting as a very personal thing: A guy gets up there with an acoustic guitar and he sings his heart out, bares his soul.
Craig Finn
#87. My main thing is just to keep writing. I've been doing some songwriting that's for my own record, I suppose.
Conor Oberst
#88. One of the most frustrating parts about songwriting for me is production, but it makes me want to get better at it and ends up being one of the most rewarding parts of it.
Brendon Urie
#89. It's nice to finally have a CD out which reflects my songwriting, my singing and the band that I have.
Mick Taylor
#90. Annie Lalley is one of the funniest and most likable personalities you'll ever see on stage
which makes the depth of her songwriting all the more striking
Pierce Pettis
#91. On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.
Eddie Van Halen
#93. I wanted to be a writer when I was a little kid. Then I wanted to be Pete Townshend - the songwriting guitarist who occasionally sang.
Travis Morrison
#95. I got into songwriting because I'm not very good at communicating sometimes, just my true words, so music was always my way of expressing myself and being able to put things into lyrics that I couldn't say necessarily in my everyday life.
LIZ
#96. As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down.
Ted Leo
#97. I think my entire songwriting catalog reflects where I was in my life at the time. I capture whatever moment I am experiencing in life.
Rayvon Owen
#98. I really do love pop. I understand songwriting, I understand the business, and I'm not stuck in any one particular time period.
Nile Rodgers
#100. It's true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is ... songs comes through you.
Greg Lake
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