Songwriting Quotes

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm a fairly tormented artist, and I'm less willing to indulge myself in self-pity, outside of songwriting.

And I look forward to the time when I can become more indulgent with my songwriting. But this band is a family, and it's a process that we have to grow with together.

At first it was my brother's songwriting and I was just doing what everyone told me.

I love songwriting. It's second to my love for singing in how I express myself.

The music is in the lead here, and a large part of this, I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel a closer bond with the craft of songwriting, stronger than I ever have.

Location is a very important aspect to songwriting.

But this is pretty new for me, both songwriting and singing.

Raymond Chandler managed to write about L.A. his whole career. Should I keep going writing about New York? Is that what I should be doing? Songwriting doesn't work that way.

I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.

Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

Well, our songwriting process is pretty collective.

I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio.

George Harrison is perhaps one of the most creative people I ever met, not only in his music and songwriting, but just the way he lived his life, decorated his gardens and homes. He was a dear friend of mine. His entire approach to music was very unique.

We have this really retro vibe and style of songwriting and, personally, I wasn't embracing the current state of music until I fell in love with hip-hop. It felt good to suddenly embrace where music was headed, and I think hip-hop is the best at that, because it feels so progressive and everybody wants to be the best.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.

For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn't mean you're fantastic.

But if you want to be a songwriter-based musician, whether you play punk or rock or country or jazz, whatever, you have to work on your songwriting and you have to work on being able to play in front of people, I think. That performance is how you create the groundwork for a lasting career.

When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting.

I have a weird life because I live on songwriting royalties, which are a strange income. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't.

Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.

All is fair in love and songwriting.

What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you're listening to the song because they're so seamless and clever.