Songwriting famous quotes
05-13-2025
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I attended a post-college program in L.A. for Music Business and Production. Took several courses involving Music Production, Arrangement, and Songwriting.
-- Adam Kluger -
You write a hit the same way you write a flop.
-- Alan Jay Lerner -
With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I'm teeming with the drive to write.
-- Alanis Morissette -
Put your faith in God and confidence in yourself.
-- Alberta Hunter -
The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.
-- Alex Kapranos -
It's not that I have resisted songwriting, it's just not something I felt I have had to do. I've just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt 'I have to sing that song'
-- Alison Krauss -
Songwriting isn't always something that's directly proportionate to the experience.
-- Amos Lee -
I don't really know that there's any real rules for songwriting.
-- Amos Lee -
Maybe poetry's not so important, but ... it makes life worth living.
-- Arda Collins -
Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.
-- Barry Mann -
You can do anything you want to do, if you know what to do.
-- Betty Carter -
Songwriting is the cheapest psychiatrist I know.
-- Billy Joe Shaver -
My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.
-- Boz Scaggs -
A lot of what has pushed me forward is desire, and I have expressed that in my songwriting - perhaps because it's safer!
-- Brian Molko -
The songwriting has never really stepped forward from the '50's.
-- Brian Setzer -
Songwriting is like talking to yourself when there is no one to talk to,
-- Brittany Howard -
It's unfashionable to admit, but playing music makes us happy and makes us smile.
-- Chris Hesse -
I've done so much songwriting and I know how to do it.
-- Ester Dean -
Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.
-- George Frideric Handel -
Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.
-- Glen Hansard -
If I knew where good songs came from, I'd go there more often.
-- Guy Clark -
It happens so quickly it seems like it's coming from somewhere else. It's not. It just means that you're in sync with yourself.
-- Harry Nilsson -
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
-- James Taylor -
Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
-- James Taylor -
I've always gravitated towards songwriting that happens easily and spontaneously, because those have always been my best songs.
-- Jane Wiedlin -
Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.
-- Jimmy Buffett -
Songwriting is an art unto itself, not to be confused with performing.
-- Jo Stafford -
Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed.
-- John Lennon -
When I was 15, all I knew was that I had to be somebody and that I could be somebody. So I exploited the only thing I knew, which was singing and songwriting.
-- Juan Gabriel -
I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.
-- Julian Casablancas -
But this is pretty new for me, both songwriting and singing.
-- Krist Novoselic -
If I don't have an outlet in which to express myself...throug h songwriting or other mediums...I get a bit jittery.
-- Laura Marling -
I feel like I'm creeping closer to finding the situation that triggers songwriting, which is obviously an extreme of an emotion.
-- Laura Marling -
Write about the truth. If you write about the truth, somebody's living that. Not just somebody, there's a lot of people.
-- Loretta Lynn -
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.
-- Matthew Sweet -
I've always loved songwriting, and I vowed to be a songwriter like Cole Porter when I was only 9 years old.
-- Mel Brooks -
I love songwriting. It's second to my love for singing in how I express myself.
-- Michael Bolton -
I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.
-- Michael Gira -
I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.
-- Mick Jagger -
A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.
-- Mike Gordon -
Isolation is a big part of songwriting.
-- Natalie Imbruglia -
Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.
-- Neil Diamond -
Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It's an unsightly act.
-- Nick Cave -
There's a lot of personal stuff that can go into songwriting but there's also a lot of dramatization and fictionalization. You have to do that to make a good song.
-- Norah Jones -
Songwriting is something I really need to work on. I don't have very many songs but I really love it. I would love to be a great song writer some day.
-- Norah Jones -
You're gonna have to learn to get out there in front of those cameras and hold your head up. Take charge when you're singing.
-- Patsy Cline -
The words come. Usually, it's a long time before they come. And then when they start to come, it doesn't take so long for it to be finished. It takes a long time to begin. And then it sort of gets finished.
-- Paul Simon -
Great songs aren't written, they're rewritten
-- R.C. Bannon -
I think I'm more prolific in the songwriting.
-- Ringo Starr -
Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do.
-- Sarah Caldwell -
Great classic music that I've been turned on to has not only inspired and influenced me, but it has had an effect on my songwriting.
-- Scott Weiland -
Say a thing well and it will be remembered-and so too will you.
-- Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet -
Read something that YOU want to read, not something that you feel compelled to read.
-- Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet -
Hemingway was very sparse in his writing. Kris Kristofferson is like that. He can take four words and say it all.
-- Todd Snider -
There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah.
-- Townes Van Zandt -
But there's a thin line between songwriting and arranging.
-- Warren Zevon -
Live we're a lot louder and noisier on the album. I think for the album we took a lot of time for the songwriting and we wanted to make good pop music, and I think there's plus and minuses to doing pop music and noise.
-- Andrew VanWyngarden -
Usually the things that happen in my life are an easy trigger for songwriting.
-- Coeur de pirate -
I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.
-- Ezra Furman -
Music really does just boil down to basically, essentially songwriting chords and melodies.
-- Flume -
Songwriting is my true passion and that's what the BMI awards are all about.
-- Kevin Rudolf -
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.
-- Scout Niblett -
Songwriting never gets old. There's always stuff to write about.
-- Tori Kelly -
'Insatiable', the album, was more of a project, really... it was more like a songwriting excursion and an exclusive deal that hadn't really ever been done that often before... me being like, 'ooh I'm an entrepreneur', rather than 'this is my singing career'.
-- Nadine Coyle -
Pop music really is a love and a joy and a science [of songwriting].
-- Halsey -
I don't think you can ever please all audiences.
-- Karan Johar
