Songwriting Quotes
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Songwriting is something that I own - it's my property, it's my music, it's my voice.
Nick Jonas
Jonas Brothers
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Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.
Tommy Shaw
Styx
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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.
Brett Dennen
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I think a lot of my interest in history now isn't so much in places and names and texts and public figures, but more in examining all the nuances and idiosyncrasies of particular stories of everyday people. And if that doesn't happen, then I usually transplant myself and my own stories to a particular historical event. Which is why you'll see me, the first person pronoun, interacting in a song about Carl Sandburg, or you'll find my [sic] interacting with Saul Bellow. It's sort of a re-rendering of history and making it my own.
Sufjan Stevens
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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.
Stephen Carter
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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.
Ravyn Lenae
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Sonic Youth was not a singer-songwriter band. It was an electric collective. And, whatever else people's perceptions of Sonic Youth were, it was always about putting together a time-based composition - and that is exactly what songwriting is, in its classic form.
Lee Ranaldo
Sonic Youth
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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.
Etgar Keret
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A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.
Mike Gordon
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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.
Lee Ranaldo
Sonic Youth
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Every time I write a song, it's different. I'm all about the rhythm of the words and the melody. Musically, you gotta have a throbbing pulse going. But as far as what it's all about, there's a million ways to go. You have to invent a new code for every song. Then you have to break it. It's like Scrabble or a crossword puzzle on steriods. I could talk about the process for days. But it's never dull and there's no one way in.
Dan Bern
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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.
Shooter Jennings