Songwriting Quotes
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My songwriting process is based on a formula: Color, tone, words. When I hear production, I initially identify the color that resonates with me. From there, I am able to translate the color into tone or emotion, which may depend on a number of things.
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I love songwriting ! It's my Number One passion other than performing. Well, actually it's like wearing three different hats: songwriting, recording and performing. They're all completely different and draw on different types of skills. With recording, there are so many different phases of production, and you have to be very careful because you can polish it until it doesn't shine.
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I started just concentrating on songwriting when I was abut 20; I'd been in rock bands six or seven years, kinda got that out of my system, I said, "ok, you ain't gonna be a rock star, you don't look like a rock star, it probably ain't gonna happen. So what you should do is write songs and maybe other people will do your songs."
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Songwriting is a mystery. And it's a mystery to me that it's a mystery. But that sounds stupid.
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Teasing out the way the world might look through another's eyes is what makes the creative process so fascinating and enjoyable.
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I want to become one of the songwriting greats. That's my number one goal.
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She knew the intensity of adolescence, and knew no cure for it except growing up. And then one has age and experience, and mourns the loss of intensity. Maybe it's why musicians and mathmaticians are said to peak young-poetry needs the fire of an unbounded universe.
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Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.
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Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter. ... I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away.
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Wherever inspiration comes from, it's like I'll hear a melody and chords, almost a rough structure of the whole thing [song]. I'll just hear it and chase what's in my head. The rest comes from jamming with band, improvising, seeing what comes up as well. I'll come up with it off the top of my head, catch it, sing and hum, and if something is missing, just jam, and that's the [songwriting] process.
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I've been sort of writing sketches for songs on my own forever and putting them down on cassette tapes. Yet for years and years and years, my main songwriting outlet was as a member of Sonic Youth, and for most of our time together, our best songs were written in a group setting, where the four of us were getting together in a room.
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Bringing up issues that are hard to deal with is a challenge for me, and I think that's what draws me to song writing.
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When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in my stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive.
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I always thought of myself as the piano player in the band. That, I suppose, I'm confident about, and I guess my songwriting developed as I went along and I got a certain amount of confidence in that. The songs are like my kids, I'm proud of all of them for one reason or another.
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Songwriting is kind of like a craft. It's not something that just comes in a dream. You've got to work at it.
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I think just letting go is a really good thing to do in many areas of your life, songwriting included.
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Writing is a way of living other lives. It is a way of expanding your life. It's not actually living a different life, it just means that you're hungry for life. There are so many things you want to do.
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All those songs are totally timeless. They'll always stand up because they came from a real place. They weren't crafted songs. They were written from the heart.
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Living in war, and being a wartime band, I don't think there's any way that can't somehow influence the songwriting.
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I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves.
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All the characters on the album are inside me, though none are me. They are sides of me or who I was.
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A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.
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Songwriting is the cheapest psychiatrist I know.
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There's an element to songwriting that I can't explain, that comes from somewhere else. I can't explain that dividing line between nothing and something that happens within a song, where you have absolutely nothing, and then suddenly you have something. It's like the origin of the universe.
