Lyrics Quotes
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I just love storytelling. I write music to tell stories. So when I'm done writing a song, I take it and go, 'Okay. How can I interpret these lyrics differently?' I love taking lyrics that were so close to me at a certain point in my life and then revamping them. I always want to take things to the next level.
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The thing about Sondheim is that it does get very cerebral. You do need a faculty with words and a love for the lyrics to not just pull it off, but to have an appreciation for it.
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I'm terrible remembering lyrics. Before a tour, I have to remind myself. I have to go through the songs.
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The lyrics came out of necessity. When we started writing the record, we started in a more fusion environment and that got boring really quick and that wasn't what we were about on an organic level.
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If I hadn't had Freddie Mercury's lyrics to hold on to as a kid I don't know where I would be. It taught me about all forms of music... it would open my mind. I never really had a bigger teacher in my whole life.
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Most of my lyrics are little stories about my experiences or those of my friends.
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With my own material, I like maintaining lyric integrity. I like having sophisticated lyrics, and maybe that's not down-the-middle Top 40 pop, but it reflects my style, my life, the way I speak, and the way I tell what's happening with my life emotionally, so in that way, it's authentic to me.
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I would love to collaborate with Chance the Rapper. I love his lyrics and his sound and everything.
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I had written lyrics to a song called The Silent Extreme, which Alex later renamed Humans Being.
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I can be stupid in my lyrics or say whatever I want without having to worry about anybody else's feeling or anybody being embarrassed by it or anything like that.
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Coming up, the music of my era was very conscious. I grew up on Public Enemy, and it was popular culture to be aware. People were wearing Malcolm X T-shirts and Malcolm X hats. It was a very cool thing to know who Malcolm X was. It was all in the lyrics. It was trendy to be conscious and aware.
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Novelists get to say plenty in their massive tomes; rock singers only get four-minute songs with two verses and a chorus' worth of lyrics, and so there's a real pleasure in accessing the intelligence behind the music, even if it doesn't qualify as 'great literature.'
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I am always getting ideas for song lyrics and keep a notebook handy. Nowadays, I take a laptop with me everywhere, because I have a stock of handwritten lyrics in it.
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Music is first, lyrics are secondary.
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Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song. Until I heard 'Little Earthquakes' all my lyrics used really obvious analogies like rain for tears.
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Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.
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Sometimes, I feel like my lyrics meander a little bit, and our songs are so big I need to write more words than are necessary.
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I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
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In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.
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With 'Someone New', I was at my rawest, and I didn't want to cover it up. And same with 'You Should Know' and 'Under the Table.' I wanted it to be the lyrics and the chord progressions, and the intricacies of the guitar of 'Someone New' are so delicate, sometimes that's all you need.
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I love great lyrics, and I love the way it could shape a tune into a very unpredictable one, and I also like taking a great melody and putting lyrics into it.
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Most of the time, the lyrics are kind of like my secret messages to my friends or my boyfriend or my mom or my dad. I would never tell them that these songs are about them or which specific lyric is about somebody. Often, when I sit down to write a lyric, it is in the heat of the moment, and something has just happened.
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You could try and read my lyrics off of this paper before I lay them. But, you won't take the sting out of these words before I say them.
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People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
