Writing Song Lyrics Quotes

#1. Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day.

Anita Diament

#2. I write my lyrics the day I sing the song, so even when I have the basic things, I'm thinking what can I change, what can I add, how many harmonies can I do.

Kirk Windstein

#3. I never walk into the studio and say, I'm going to write a song called ... 'X' or called 'Slow Me Down.' I write a ton of lyrics, often the title is somewhere in those 10 pages of ... I call it brain vomit. It's kind of like whatever comes out of my head and I'm unabashedly just writing it down.

Emmy Rossum

#4. There have always been jokes all over our songs; I originally started writing lyrics to make my friends crack a smile, which is difficult.

Alex Turner

#5. I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.

Bonnie McKee

#6. The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song.

Bryan Ferry

#7. If I knew what to do
I'd do more than write a song for you

Criss Jami

#8. In most of my films I write the music into the script. I'm listening to songs and lyrics that empower the themes of the film. There's a lot of Indigenous music that has not been heard widely and I love the idea of giving that music to the rest of the world.

Warwick Thornton

#9. Maybe the key to finding the perfect song is simply rewriting the lyrics.

Kandi Steiner

#10. I got a little bit lost in the writing process: like, that moment in the 'Fight Song' music video where I'm throwing the crumpled paper on the bed, that was really true life. I was filling journals with different possibilities of lyrics for the first verse. And none of them felt right.

Rachel Platten

#11. Sometimes I'll get a burst when I write lyrics, it usually happens in 20 minutes and I'll write the whole song, and that's really the only way it feels comfortable.

Jonny Lang

#12. Whether it's a letter, song lyrics, part of a novel, or instructions on how to fix a kitchen sink, it's writing. You keep your craft honed, you acquire the discipline to finish things. You turn into a self-taskmaster.

Jimmy Buffett

#13. When I write I like to give equal justice to lyrics, too. I want the song to have meaning for me so I can make it have meaning for the audience.

Oliver

#14. 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

#15. I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.

Kim Gordon

#16. Singing the songs, writing the lyrics, emotioning the words; that is all I can do for love.

M.F. Moonzajer

#17. I think I took a few stabs at writing socially conscious lyrics. I had never intended to write a song about the Gulf War, but when I wrote "Before You Hit The Floor," I didn't know what the hell was going on in the world.

Bucky Pope

#18. I write all my own songs and they are just simple melodies with a lot of lyrics. They usually have to do with current events and what is going on in the news. You can call them topical songs, songs about the news, and then developing into more philosophical songs later.

Phil Ochs

#19. I'd like to do a song that I wrote today about our government's increasing infringement on our right to privacy, but the lyrics mysteriously disappeared from my guitar case.

Dan Piraro

#20. I've tried every which way for writing lyrics - everything from using really bizarre imagery and metaphors, sort of obscuring the facts of what I'm singing about, all the way over to a song like 'Losing My Mind,' where you're just reading my thoughts as they're occurring.

Rivers Cuomo

#21. While writing, I tend to repeat the same song, endlessly, for thousands of times. This helps me ignore any lyrics, and helps create a consistent mood for each book.

Chuck Palahniuk

#22. ... that same hardware and tackle shop his dad got lost in for hours while Kache waited in the truck, writing lyrics on the backs of old envelopes his mom kept in the glove compartment for blotting her lipstick. Kache had written around the red blooms of her lip prints.

Sere Prince Halverson

#23. The fact that I'm shouting that I have Gangnam style makes people crack up. Imagine if Brad Pitt was singing the song - would it be funny? A twist is important when it comes to writing lyrics.

Psy

#24. I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.

Stephen Sondheim

#25. The way Jacques Brel writes a story, getting into the character, bringing out all his faults and qualities in the same song ... Not that I could ever write in such an epic way, but it really is a different way to go about writing lyrics ... and I find that quite inspiring.

Zach Condon

#26. I do believe that when I'm writing music, I get addicted to the music of the concept of what the outcome of the song is, or the passion behind the lyrics.

Nikki Sixx

#27. I'm not bashing people who write songs that are just 'get on the dance floor and party party', I understand why people need those songs too, but I don't really write lyrics like that.

William Beckett

#28. If I learned to play guitar it was so that I would have something to sing to, if I learned to write a song it was so that I would have something to sing. So the gut feeling you're talking about comes from singing and communicating the lyrics and what it is that we feel.

Brandi Carlile

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. I have a voice that's obviously untrained - and I think untrainable - so I kind of secreted it away for a long time. Actually, I would write songs with lyrics when I was younger, but I would just sing in my head.

Joanna Newsom

#33. I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.

Billy Joel

#34. 'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.

Isaac Brock

#35. At the beginning of a new project, often before I do any actual writing, I collect photos, quotes, song lyrics, and even objects that relate to the characters or the world I'm creating.

Kami Garcia

#36. Sometimes melody and sometimes lyrics. It depends on the tempo and feel of the song. Slower pieces usually begin with melody and faster ones with lyrics. I write for the song and it leads me to my conclusion.

Ronnie James Dio

#37. I write my songs usually while I'm walking around. Or in a car. Or in a bus, a plane, something like that. I jot down lyrics wherever I am. Usually it's on a vomit bag on an airplane or something. I just look for a pen.

Joshua Radin

#38. The songs I was writing still had lyrics or sentiments that didn't match what I was feeling. It was old, negative energy coming out of me still, but it needed to all get out so I could trash those songs and put them in the bin. And then I was able to let the new songs out.

Damien Rice

#39. I think there are some songwriters who are just brilliant who can write and then I think there are some songwriters who can like me I have a problem writing chorus lyrics but I can write a song in a story like that.

Charles King

#40. To all companies please stop using Xmas songs and inserting your own lyrics. Write your own music. I am boycotting you until you stop.

Bill Engvall

#41. When you write a song it's sometimes in a desperate moment whn you can't really articulate it. What I love about lyrics is what T.S. Eliot said: 'Good poetry is felt before it is heard.' I'm a believer in that. It's those moments when you sit yourself down, and talk to yourself in the mirror.

Marcus Mumford

#42. Since I write the lyrics, I don't want to be pigeonholed into a person who's out there preaching these songs. If you read the lyrics, there isn't a story being set up for you. You have to use your imagination to get the best out of the songs - if you choose to do that.

Linda Perry

#43. I write my own lyrics completely on my own. Sometimes I have people helping me with concepts or like choruses and stuff sometimes, but mostly I write all my own songs by myself, especially the verses and a lot of the choruses.

Big Sean

#44. I write lyrics everyday as I go. I'm always taking notes in my phone whenever I am inspired by something. Most of my writing starts out as poetry before I put it into songs.

Vic Fuentes

#45. Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose ... anything goes.

Cole Porter

#46. There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

Nuno Bettencourt

#47. I live alone in a house, so for me it's very good to just be able to re-charge and just disappear and escape from reality and that's usually when I write most of my lyrics and my songs. It's a very happy productive place.

Adam Young

#48. When I write lyrics, I really do go into an automatic folk appropriation mode. I see the vernacular register of 20th century song as being a bunch of forms to adapt and reconfigure.

Jonathan Lethem

#49. What's interesting about songs where the writer is genuinely in love with words is that it's easy to read the lyrics like a poem.

Ann Reed

#50. Each song had a different way of coming about. In some, the music was written first while others it was the lyrics. We didn't want to overthink anything too much - we just wanted to, writing-wise, chuck out as many ideas as possible.

Elena Tonra

#51. When I'm writing songs, I write visually. When I'm writing the words down and I listen to the melody and the lyrics, I start seeing the video form. And if I can get through a song and from the beginning to the end have the whole video in my mind, I think that's a great song.

Christian Kane

#52. I want to write songs with complete sentences. I almos have this obsession with short-changing words. I would never be so pretentious to say that my lyrics are poetry ... Poems are poems. Song lyrics are for songs.

Ben Gibbard