Quotes About Writing Songs

#1. Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.

Sting

#2. I'm writing songs to perform, to entertain. And when I'm really trying to get inspired, I go backwards, and I just rap.

Mystikal

#3. I like writing songs. I like the camarderie of the and. I like touring. I love playing bass. And then there's free beer.

Keanu Reeves

#4. 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

#5. I didn't want to be a big record mogul and all that stuff. I just wanted to write songs and make people laugh.

Berry Gordy

#6. I really, really like writing songs.

Debbie Harry

#7. Writing songs and looking for ideas is like blinking my eyes. It's an involuntary muscle. I do it without thought.

Toby Keith

#8. Writing songs is cheaper than going to therapy.

Brent Smith

#9. I love making records; I love making music; I love writing songs.

Barry Gibb

#10. I would imagine that most of my writing is done spontaneously. I had no intention of writing, and then I'll just walk through the house, and I'll hear this melody, and I'll turn on the tape players and go back to it later on. Some days I'll get 3-5 songs a day.

Andrae Crouch

#11. I've found for the last couple of years that the things that I can become most deeply involved with are songs that reflect my real feelings about things and so that what I've been writing about.

Neil Diamond

#12. I watch movies and hang with my family, go shopping, love to cuddle with my dog, Happy, & write songs with my guitar!

Megan Lee

#13. Well, I started writing songs about three years ago when I learned to play the guitar, but I've been singing since I was eleven.

Colbie Caillat

#14. When I began writing songs, there was a pretty direct line between what was happening in my life and what I wrote about. So my first album was really all about my failed attempts to make a particular relationship work.

Erin McKeown

#15. I tend to write songs fast, so the process usually only lasts around 30 minutes. In the studio is where I really can artistically breathe, and let my ideas flow.

Alan Cohen

#16. The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

A.R. Rahman

#17. To take part in the African revolution, it is not enough to write a revolutionary song. You must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves.

Ahmed Sekou Toure

#18. I think it's hard to really write a song that will educate someone because songs are meant to be ... you don't want to be too didactic in a song because it doesn't make for good music. And I think the role of songs can be to inspire people but there needs to education and prose to back that up.

John Legend

#19. Singing didn't really come naturally to me, I don't think. I had to really work at it. I just kept singing. I never was really worried about it, though, because I was writing songs, and that was the most important thing to me.

Tom Odell

#20. Writing catchy pop songs is a super-minor superpower, but it's mine.

J.C. Lillis

#21. I just always wrote songs as a side hobby. So it was sort of a natural thing to write comedy songs. But when I started writing songs, I wrote very serious songs. Or things that a 13-14 year-old would think are very serious issues.

Kyle Dunnigan

#22. If you're writing songs by yourself, who's going to tell you if it's good or not? But if you're writing songs with somebody else, you get that immediate feedback.

Glenn Frey

#23. Me personally, I side more with punk rock bands. I grew up with The Misfits, The Dead Boys, The Damned, Dropkick Murphys, and early AFI. That was the stuff that really got me into music. Song writing wise, bands like Alkaline Trio were very important to me for beginning to write songs.

Andy Biersack

#24. I can play the guitar and the keys and the drums. I'm not brilliant at any of them. I can sing too. Some of my friends are proper musicians but I'm a song-writer. I write songs.

Jim Sturgess

#25. Writing songs about it is a really useful way for me to love New York more, and stay observing it, and not just zone it out.

Frankie Cosmos

#26. I've been writing songs all along, and since moving to Nashville in the late-'80s, I'd begun writing something like 15-20 songs a year, instead of the typical three or four in previous years.

Bernie Leadon

#27. I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

Craig Finn

#28. If prolific is writing a lot of songs, I'm that. If it's writing a lot of good songs, I'm something else.

Five For Fighting

#29. Writing songs does not get any easier, and that might be because I am harder on myself than I was twenty years ago. Hopefully, as we grow older and change, there are fresh topics, new perspectives, or at least there should be.

Dean Wareham

#30. I write poems for myself and I write poetry that gets torn apart and becomes songs. I have a lot of respect for words, the power of words.

Kurt Cobain

#31. Just seeing the things on TV and the things in front of you, the amount of information coming in, and the lack of information not coming in, how could you not help but write songs about it.

Billie Joe Armstrong

#32. I usually can be more honest writing songs than actually talking to people.

Joshua Radin

#33. Sometimes, I make 50 songs and pick out the best 10. I've been in the studio all day, all night, making the beat, writing the raps. You never know what's gonna be a hit.

Juicy J

#34. If you want to be a singer, you've got to concentrate on it twenty-four hours a day. You can't be a well driller, too. You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Otis Redding

#35. As much as you don't want to say you are a vengeful person, when someone drags your name through the mud and plays press games and puts things out there like that, you are kind of like, alright. US Weekly will be gone next week, the songs I am writing won't.

Kid Rock

#36. I love not being in charge of writing all the songs, and being the front person - the whole thing is cool.

John Britt Daniel

#37. The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

Waylon Jennings

#38. From very early on, I've realized that and I have a mission statement with my songs to entertain, to encourage and to challenge the Body of Christ. That's always kind of the focus of the songs that I write for myself.

Jonny Diaz

#39. We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

Miranda Lambert

#40. Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.

Shakira

#41. I like writing songs - I keep saying that one day I'll do something with them, but I haven't yet.

Tom Conti

#42. It all has to do with art - writing, painting, things I've done for a long time but just never had enough time to pursue. I have poetry - things that are designed for songs, but they're always poems first.

Jason Newsted

#43. To create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish.

Jason Mraz

#44. It's so easy to write songs about misery and hard times and sadness. It's much more difficult to write songs about happy and chirpy stuff.

Elton John

#45. I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.

David Byrne

#46. I tried to stick with what I knew best, which is writing rock n' roll songs and melodies. I am as passionate as I was when I was 20.

Gary Cherone

#47. Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.

Patti Smith

#48. I've written some poetry, but ... songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.

Mike Gordon

#49. I care about the records I make and I love writing songs and some songs are really dear to me and they mean something. But the memory of making the records and the activities surrounding the records, the people involved in them is actually a bigger thing to me.

Joel Plaskett

#50. The easiest thing I do is assignment songs. They tell me what they need me to write. I can do that fairly quickly. Writing for an orchestra is difficult. Writing songs [on your own] is most difficult of all. Though [writing for] the orchestra is close.

Randy Newman

#51. All the best songs are, I think, the easiest write because they just come out.

Benji Madden

#52. I'll always definitely strive to write songs that are going to help people feel confident in themselves.

Melanie Martinez

#53. Writing songs was like my ticket to the world, I think.

Bill Callahan

#54. I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.

Courtney Barnett

#55. My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.

Conor Oberst

#56. I'm only 49 years old. I'm still in the middle of this whole thing. I don't feel like it's finished at all. I'm still planning to write better songs.

Paul McCartney

#57. I have so many songs, it's ridiculous. I love so many different types of music and tend to write all over the map, style-wise. R&B, rock 'n' roll, screamers, pop, good-time songs.

Taryn Manning

#58. I like to make up songs. And it's my opinion that all these songs mean a lot to me, but that doesn't mean I think everything needs to leave the house. If it helps me through my life and doesn't bore anybody in theirs.

Todd Snider

#59. I feel like the songs that I write are best when they are performed by an ensemble, rather than by one solo instrument.

Thalia Zedek

#60. My second album was written while I was on the road promoting the first record. I tried to take my personal experiences and elevate them to universal experiences, so that I wasn't writing songs about living on a tour bus or being on a TV set for the first time.

Kate Voegele

#61. I'm always writing songs, and I've got a bunch that I want to record.

Paul McCartney

#62. I'd always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music. My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs.

Macklemore

#63. I was writing songs as a kid about leprechauns and Catwoman and teapots - whatever it is that little girls wanna sing about. The first song I wrote was called "Kitten." It was about a boy named Liam, who I was just crazy about.

Bonnie McKee

#64. I can imagine moving out to the seaside at some point. I like Brighton, my sister lives there. I'm a seaside boy and whenever I go there, I find myself writing songs about it.

Marc Almond

#65. I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

Alicia Witt

#66. If Jennifer Lopez could write songs like Fiona Apple's, she wouldn't have to spend so many hours at the gym.

Shirley Manson

#67. I went to Morocco, joined a band called Pegasus, ran out of money, went to Gibraltar and worked on the docks, writing songs about the sun and the morning and the birds.

Graham Parker

#68. When I was writing the Destiny's Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn't know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

Beyonce Knowles

#69. It's great for my daughter to see Beyonce and Taylor Swift, women that are in charge of their own careers, writing songs from their own perspective and taking people to task. That's very different from when I was growing up - it was all like, 'Stand by your man.'

Corin Tucker

#70. In itself, I spent a year writing, you know all these different songs and when it came to recording the record, I just pulled out all the tracks I liked the most.

Wednesday 13

#71. I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the Brother Bear score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.

Phil Collins

#72. I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.

Halsey

#73. Writing songs is not something I wanted to share with people for a long time. It was precious to me. I didn't want someone to crush it. I waited until I felt strong enough to take the criticism.

Ray Lamontagne

#74. When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.

Paul Weller

#75. I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

Nick Cave

#76. All songs are already perfectly written. It is the writer's job to find it and get it on paper.

Beth Nielsen Chapman

#77. The idea of writing songs because you're depressed and you need to communicate it somehow, that isn't really true for me.

Andrew Bird

#78. Sometimes I'll write a song. When I've gone through something really hard in my life, sometimes it's other people's music. Other times it's actually writing the songs and getting out of mind and into the song.

Jack Johnson

#79. Even when I'm in quite a happy state of mind, I like writing really sad songs. I think a lot of people do.

Ellie Goulding

#80. Whenever I start writing, I try to put together songs that feed the feeling of the movie.

Spike Jonze

#81. I only write about stuff I know. I don't have a lot of experience with boys and stuff so I write a lot of songs about interesting and strange subjects that people wouldn't write songs about.

Brie Larson

#82. We played more rock music when we were writing the script. 'Renegade'. All of the Styx songs. All of the old '70's and '80's music, that's the stuff that's pounding in the background while we were doing this stuff. It's a part of those movies.

Todd Farmer

#83. All of my records have been very personal, just writing more and more songs, you get better at being able to say what you feel.

Shooter Jennings

#84. I have been writing songs since I was 9 years old, so writing has and always will be my first love and passion.

Solange Knowles

#85. If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.

Austin Carlile

#86. My favorite hobby is writing and recording songs at my studio. I like to surf, but I don't get a chance to do that as much as I'd like. I don't live close to the beach. I also like to ski, but I don't get to do that much, either.

Scott Weiland

#87. I grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired.

Ariana Grande

#88. David had apparently been busy writing more songs about the glory of doing his wife.
Ah, true love and stuff.

Kylie Scott

#89. Don't be afraid to write bad songs and then start over and re-evaluate. Songs are like plants, in that you grow them. Some grow really fast, and others need pruning and care ... And, finally, a song needs to move you. If it doesn't move you, it will never move anybody else.

Corey Harris

#90. I have this really beautiful Martin guitar, and it just kind of writes songs for me.

Stephan Jenkins

#91. I started writing songs when I was a little kid actually. I wrote a song about Catwoman and I wrote a song about Leprechauns, as a little kid.

Bonnie McKee

#92. I don't have a problem baring my emotions in music. That's one of the reasons I'm glad to have music in my life. I'm pretty resilient as far as being a human being. A lot of songs write themselves.

Shelby Lynne

#93. Even before I started writing songs, that was one of my goals to be a writer, and I still have that goal. I've just gotten sidetracked.

Jason Reeves

#94. I've always said I write albums; I don't write random songs and then sort them out.

Bradford Cox

#95. It takes me forever to write songs most of the time.

Mark Linkous

#96. Right now I really enjoy writing songs.

Jonny Lang

#97. I had kids at age 47, and very late in life, and I'd been doing it for 30 straight years, writing songs, making a record and touring and starting the process right over.

Bob Seger

#98. When I was 17 I got a guitar for my birthday and started discovering Bob Dylan and James Taylor and the whole '60s thing, and that made me want to make songs, to go beyond just playing an instrument. I needed to write I guess.

Jason Reeves

#99. Greg Trooper writes great songs, including one of my very favorite songs in the world, Little Sister. On top of all that, there's his voice - an instrument I have coveted for 15 years.

Steve Earle

#100. I could write songs about politics, but I'm conscious of not writing songs that sound the same as the ones I wrote 30 years ago.

Paul Weller