Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always wanted to sing and to be an entertainer. After high school, I moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles and started songwriting. But I didn't really get serious until then.
Songwriting's a weird game. I never intended to become one - I fell into this by mistake, and I can't get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life.
I didn't move to Nashville with any inkling or dreams of getting a record deal. I didn't have those stars in my eyes. I just wanted to take a break, relax, and figure out songwriting.
Anyone who takes the craft of songwriting seriously I radiate towards. Spending time with Daryl Hall was a dream come true. I picked his brain a lot because Hall And Oats is timeless.
Songwriting wasn't my gift. I think you have to cultivate a gift; you have to practice and develop craft around your gift so that you can execute it in more convenient, efficient ways.
I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.
Songwriting really kicked in with the guitar. I was going through a lot as a kid. There had been a lot of transitions in my family. So it just became a total therapy, like most artists.
I thought my singing and songwriting were good, but nothing different. Then you're presented with this picture image that contradicts the impression you get from listening to the record.
First thing, I throw on some jeans, a T-shirt and my Keds sneakers and make coffee. That is actually my favorite time of day. That is when I do my songwriting, when I am in writing mode.
You always try different versions of yourself through songwriting. It can get a bit annoying to see them walk around and do their thing when you feel like, 'I'm not that person any more.'
The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.
I wanted to play rock and roll when I started playing. Nobody at that time ever thought about songwriting. You sang songs, that's all. You sang other people's songs. That's all there were.
My songwriting is very personal. The music that influenced me was so impactful that had I grown up somewhere else, I know I would still write the same way I do because of those influences.
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.
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.
I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.
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.
It wasn't so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.
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.
I actually write film music because I'm classically trained on the piano so as well as songwriting I also write actual film music that could be used for movies like war movies and love movies.
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.
When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.
I've been writing a lot about my encounter with love. Which is the white stag as far as songwriting is concerned because love songs are so banal, and my experience with love is anything but that.
With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.
My love of Green Day is on so many levels. It's their genius for songwriting, the fact that they write about very important subjects, both personal and political, and they're just a timeless band.
Some of my best songwriting choices started as mistakes or learning curves, when I accidentally hit a 'wrong' key or something. I try not to lose that the more I learn the how's and why's of piano.
You get some confidence in your songwriting abilities and go for the essentials - guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Those are the basic band essentials that have to be in place before you go any further.
Fifth Harmony as a group represents more confidence, more girl power, more unity. They're anthems, as opposed to confessional songwriting about one person's life when there are five individual women.
The songwriting did come naturally; it really did. Like Joe said, the first song we ever wrote together was the song that got us signed, you know, so it was either luck, fate, or something in between.
What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.
As a creative individual, I really go out of my way to avoid the corporate scene in terms of songwriting. If the first question is how much money is it going to make, I'm going to be in trouble anyway.
I've been very grateful and humbled by the fact that young people really dig Joy Division's music. It's a great testament to the chemistry and the songwriting prowess between the four original members.
I was a business major, but the more I played music and the more I got into songwriting, I realized this is what I loved, but I kept asking myself, 'Is this what I'm supposed to do - move to Nashville?'
The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.
I do feel pressure internally and externally to put out music, but that excites me because I love songwriting, and this brings me back to why I got in music in the first place, so I'm excited about that.
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.
I'm definitely a fan of juxtaposition. Using the most beautiful line to say the most horrific thing - I think one of the main things in songwriting is definitely friction between the words and the melody.
I usually eat breakfast twice. I'm usually up at 3 a.m. - do my spiritual work, my affirmations, a little bit of songwriting, get my daily work in order, and by that time I've worked up a bigger appetite.
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.'
My process of songwriting comes from a very real place: a place that when you watch 'American Idol' - God bless it, it's probably an awesome experience that these people are having, but it's not a real one.
You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.
I think you can't really beat Bob Marley, especially the stuff he was doing with Lee Perry. Just that kind of clubby and dark and crazy stuff, even with the Wailers... Some of the songwriting was phenomenal.
I'm from a little island off of Massachusetts, Nantucket. It's hard getting into the music business from there, but my parents took me to songwriting festivals because I would write and produce my own music.
For my whole career, I've been a singer-slash-songwriter, even though I'm very thankfully known for my voice. Songwriting has always been a joy in my life, and to be recognized for it is extremely validating.
Battle rap is about how much you can say and putting so many different words and expressions together to get your point across, and songwriting is like, how can I get that same point across but by saying less.
The songwriting community in Nashville really is all about your talent. It's not about your image, and you have to be humble. You have to be kind. You have to have zero ego when you walk into that writing room.
Once I got into pop songwriting, I was kind of just ready to help other people tell their stories... I'm here to facilitate and structure and grow and make things a little more fabulous and a little more urgent.
On 'Utopia,' I mix sick beats with ethereal elements while trying to keep the focus very much on the songwriting. If you strip any of these songs down to just the vocal and a piano, there's a real song in there.
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. What do I write about? I never know.