Song Writing Quotes

#1. I tend to like to write a song and then think about it for a while. I record a demo of it and then put it away and wait until I've gotten more thoughts on it or get sure exactly how to approach it.

Christopher Owens

#2. Writing a song doesn't heal things. Even if the song comes up with a solution, it's still only a theory. Going out and living my lyrics is a whole other deal. That takes courage.

Alanis Morissette

#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. It's about you putting in the work, practicing every day, and hopefully one day you write the song the whole world wants to get down to. And one day you're going to be sitting next to Ellen DeGeneres talking about how you broke records and rocked the Super Bowl!

Bruno Mars

#6. Writing a song is actually quite easy. Writing a good one is very, very difficult.

Joe Elliott

#7. 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

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

Brent Smith

#9. If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

Charlie Daniels

#10. You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

#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. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.

Nick Cave

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. Unlike motor sport, I didn't get into music for the live performances. I like writing and studio work and seeing how a song can come to life.

Jacques Villeneuve

#21. 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

#22. As long as you give my friend Jonah Lehrer a free pizza, I'll write a song about your restaurant.

Bob Dylan

#23. I don't really care about how good a song is, I only want them to reflect what I felt when I was writing them

Lana Del Rey

#24. The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

Chris Stapleton

#25. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.

Wednesday 13

#26. 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

#27. Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

Leon Bridges

#28. I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house ... love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.

David Byrne

#29. Your testimony doesn't mean anything if it is not your testimony. So every song that I write it happened at one point in my life or another.

Mike Willis

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

Craig Finn

#31. If there's something that I really need to say that I can't say by speaking to someone, I usually write it in a song or a letter to someone.

Joshua Radin

#32. I always look for a "rhythm" in my writing. A cadence to the sentences. Sometimes I think of pieces I write in a song writing infrastructure - i.e., a verse, a chorus that I return to, a bridge that's something differenct, a chorus that I return to.

Mitch Albom

#33. He starts to hum, a haunting melody. No words ride the music, only the familiar notes of a forgotten song.

A.G. Howard

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. Often the simplest song is the hardest to write.

Patti Smith

#37. You can find me in the melodies, the chord progressions, the song style and structure. The lyrical places you fine me most are in the lyrics that 'show' more than 'tell.' I like to describe what the listener is seeing and let them make up the middle rather than telling them.

Kristian Bush

#38. I'm weird - I don't really listen to American music while I'm writing. I do occasionally get an anthem song, but generally speaking, when I write, I only listen to Japanese and Hawaiian music.

Violet Duke

#39. 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

#40. 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

#41. Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I'm going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It's always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.

Bruno Mars

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

Joshua Radin

#43. 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

#44. 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

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

John Britt Daniel

#46. I'm very parasitic, from my own experiences. I just go and mine my dirty laundry, you know, and go through it until I find something that's interesting enough to me to write a song about.

Nikki Jean

#47. 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

#48. Song-writing is therapy for me. I'm a very moody person, very difficult to live with. There's a lot going on and a lot of contradictions. My life is always one step away from disaster.

Gary Numan

#49. I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus.

John Lennon

#50. 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

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

Miranda Lambert

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. Every time I write a song it feels like it could be the last one I do, or it always feels like a fluke.

Courtney Barnett

#55. 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

#56. 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

#57. 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

#58. 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

#59. I don't actually have to think very hard when I'm writing. I mean, there are times where it's a task, and you have to plug away and plug away. But then there are times when a song writes itself in 15 minutes, and you're just struggling to keep up with it.

Patty Griffin

#60. What rare days were those, When my chief duty was to write a song.

George Arnold

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. 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

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

Benji Madden

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

Melanie Martinez

#66. If you're asking if I would be foolish enough, or insulting enough, to write about people in my life that I respect and sell it to the masses as a "break-up song," I can't imagine doing that to people I love.

Jack White

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 'Victorious' for me was a chance to write a song exactly how I was feeling - I was feeling triumphant, I was feeling like I could do anything as long as I've got the people that I love by my side. We're gonna go out and conquer it, and party, and just be awesome.

Brendon Urie

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. I take my inspiration for the song writing from little experiences, not even if I've experienced them myself but say if something has made me sad, I will use that emotion. I just use everyday life and write about it.

Pixie Lott

#76. 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

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

Shirley Manson

#78. But I never want to get to the point where I write a safe song or one that represents my sense of a subject in order to appear civilized.

Suzanne Vega

#79. So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

Glenn Danzig

#80. Love may be nothing more than a complex interaction of hormones, conditioned behavior, and positive reinforcement, but try writing a poem or song about that.

Rick Yancey

#81. 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

#82. Sometimes it takes time to get into what ideas actually mean to you. Even when you're not writing a song, it's like that.

Boots Riley

#83. 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

#84. Sometimes I write a song and I'm down with it but I'm like yeah, whatever, and then everybody loves it and then it blows up. I'm like: "Okay! I didn't see that coming."

Bonnie McKee

#85. 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

#86. When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.

Luke Bryan

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

Beth Nielsen Chapman

#88. The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation. I can't contrive a song.

Gene Clark

#89. 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

#90. The song could start with a riff that I base the song around. Or a chord progression or a melody I have, I just write a story about it. Lyric-wise, it's cool to have someone else's input too.

Orianthi

#91. It was Rick's Rubin idea to have the 'Brooklyn' verse repeat. It already was a story, but having that made it a folk song. Instead of this rambling march of verses, Rick understands that music needs hooks. You need that repeated chorus, that everyone can sing along to.

Scott Avett

#92. You always want to write the perfect song. But no one will ever write the perfect song, I guess. I would just like to write on that has all the elements of what I'm tring to do. And I'm working on it. I'm always working on it.

Mose Allison

#93. My goal is to think of nothing when I'm writing a song because too many influences could sabotage a potentially amazing song.

Ricky Martin

#94. I want to read every book that's written
hear every song that was sung
I want to gaze at every cloud
and hold the zing of each fruit on my tongue.

Sanober Khan

#95. 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

#96. 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

#97. Songwriting is like ... being possessed. You try to go to sleep but the song won't let you.

John Lennon

#98. I always use familiarity in my music, whether it's in my song writing or whatever.

SonReal

#99. I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

Billy Joel

#100. I very rarely sit down with a guitar and try to write a song. I usually think about it a lot and then I'll try to re-create what was in my head at the time.

Sune Rose Wagner