Song Writing Quotes

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. 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

#4. 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

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

SonReal

#6. I enjoy the song writing process more than anything. It's what I like the most, just sitting in my room with guitar or at the piano or something. Just making something up, something that's not there, that suddenly is there.

Bernard Fanning

#7. I was fascinated to think about a place where men could be the mothers and I thought of my own song-writing and I decided to have a relationship with their daughters.

Tori Amos

#8. Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.

Mick Jagger

#9. Experience is all I have. I equate song-writing with archeology. Every day you dig. You dig into different places within yourself - even finding places that you've rarely been. And buried within the soil is song.

Jon Foreman

#10. I just started to understand my craft, what I wanted to do as an artist. It's just a growing process. Figuring out exactly what I wanted to do and obviously I toured a whole bunch. I did a lot of song writing for other people and then just settled back into my zone.

Young De

#11. I've always been an all around creative person. Song writing and writing are great ways for me to express myself.

Manika

#12. I think expression is at it's best when it comes from an honest place, so I always try to use my own life experiences, feelings, struggles, frustrations etc. as the catalyst for my song writing.

Kate Brown

#13. U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

Bono

#14. In order to actually have a touchscreen in front of me and somehow still be connected to nature, I needed to be able to incorporate natural elements into the song structures. Because that's always been my song-writing accompaniment: nature.

Bjork

#15. The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.

Adam Goldberg

#16. In the earlier days I did most of the song writing by myself, and I got to a place in my life where I felt it was necessary to go outside my box and get some outside inspiration.

Jason Wade

#17. Money's really - you know, song writing, yes, there's money to be made and things like that. But really, when you talk about the real money, you talk about touring. No question.

Kid Rock

#18. Well we never set out to write a concept album. I've always used song writing as a therapeutic release so in that process, I just do my best to be honest with myself and look inside myself and whatever comes out usually just reflects or depicts what I'm going through in my life at that time.

Chuck Ragan

#19. I think pain is the best feeling for song writing. You can write good happy songs, but I think the kind of bruiting, depressing ones are more effective. They are easier to write when I am impassioned and angry. It is a good way to channel that negative energy.

Adam Levine

#20. You can get too bogged down in technology and you can sort of forget what it is you were trying to do. And with the Pet Shop Boys it's primarily about the songs, it's about song writing.

Chris Lowe

#21. I love song writing, so I'm always happy to write for other musicians.

Sean Kingston

#22. I'm into song-writing; I'm into melodies that break your heart a little bit. That's the thing that got me into music; that's what I look for in music for the most part.

Danger Mouse

#23. There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

Edgar Allan Poe

#24. My song-writing has always been just about my life - usually my worst moments.

Natalia Kills

#25. Singing was probably my first love, and song writing. I write a lot of love songs and heartbreaking songs.

Nolan Sotillo

#26. Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don't know why this one is different, but it is. You don't know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can't stop thinking about it.

Taylor Swift

#27. I had to take a bit of a break and fast for a while, but then I found myself very, very hungry when I got back to [song-writing].

Damien Rice

#28. That's the beauty of song writing. You never know when inspiration will come or how it will hit, you just gotta kinda grasp a hold of it and make sense of it somehow.

Kimbra

#29. I enjoyed singing, I loved song writing, I loved recording. All those things that involves with creating music was great.

Ben E. King

#30. Bringing up issues that are hard to deal with is a challenge for me, and I think that's what draws me to song writing.

Brett Dennen

#31. I'm not a perfect song writer, but I am song writing problems with dynamics, instrument change and arrangements.

Richard Patrick

#32. Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.

Bjorn Ulvaeus

#33. Basically what I'm trying to say is that when you get down to the nitty gritty of song writing, it is very logical to a certain degree. It requires a bit of intuition as to how things can fit together elegantly.

Vienna Teng

#34. I really didn't think about song writing.

Adam Rich

#35. I guess the approach to song writing for me so far has been to use more chords and less math.

Mick Barr

#36. The Fat Mattress consisted of people I'd played with before joining the 'Experience and it was put together as a song writing situation.

Noel Redding

#37. Elvis Costello's song writing is so peerless and individualistic. It's storytelling and it's deeply intelligent and clever.

Chip Esten

#38. Song writing is about the male-female relationship. Yes, there are songs of, of brotherhood and politics but very rarely do we write about computers or, there are car songs, cars are cool. But even in the car songs, it's, ah, usually gets down to me and my baby and my car.

Jeff Barry

#39. In a way song writing can almost be detrimental, because suddenly you find an outlet that is a kind of cheating. You don't need to have direct communication. You can say, 'I can't describe it to you, but I will record it and send it to you.'

James Blunt

#40. There are some good songs, but not the kind of song-writing that I remember, that I like. Springsteen still does it. Paul Simon, and there are also good writers, but that doesn't dominate the charts.

Jackie DeShannon

#41. It's always amazing seeing the song-writing process. A song just starts off as just an idea or a story you want to tell. It keeps building and building when you add the lyrics, the instruments, the vocals until you finally reach the finished song other people can enjoy.

Manika

#42. I can't wait to be a mom and a wife, and explore that phase of life. And also see how it affects and influences my song writing and creativity.

Tristan Prettyman

#43. I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.

Dorothy Fields

#44. I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft ... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

Chantal Kreviazuk

#45. The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?

Kelsea Ballerini

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. 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

#49. 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

#50. 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

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

Joe Elliott

#52. 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

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

Brent Smith

#54. 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

#55. 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

#56. 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

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

Megan Lee

#58. 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

#59. 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

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. 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

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. 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

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

Bob Dylan

#67. 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

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. 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

#73. 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

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

Craig Finn

#75. 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

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

A.G. Howard

#77. 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

#78. 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

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

Patti Smith

#80. 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

#81. 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

#82. 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

#83. 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

#84. 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

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

Joshua Radin

#86. 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

#87. 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

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

John Britt Daniel

#89. 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

#90. 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

#91. 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

#92. 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

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

Miranda Lambert

#94. 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

#95. 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

#96. 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

#97. 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

#98. 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

#99. 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

#100. 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