Songwriting Quotes
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You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.
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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.
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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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A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.
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I don't enjoy songwriting.
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People have been brainwashed into believing that it's got to be down or it wouldn't be blues. But it's not so. It's got to be a fact or it wouldn't be blues.
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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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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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Songwriting really anchored me.
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The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
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I don't really have a set-in-stone process or formula. Sometimes the melody is there and I have to chase down the lyrics. Sometimes, the song is there and I have to make the melody fit. What I've learned so far about songwriting is that I can't force a song. If I try to do that, it's hollow, and people know a hollow song when they hear it. It's the song they stop listening to and forget about. I'd prefer not to write those kinds of songs.
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Sometimes you're writing a song and you have an image whilst writing a song. I don't think you ever base a songwriting process around a video, but when you're writing a song sometimes it'll be a very visual song.
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I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.
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Songwriting's never been a natural art for me; it's always been a bit of a struggle.
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We have a camp up in the Adirondacks with no electricity, and I find that it's one of the most fertile places for me as far as songwriting because there isn't much to do.
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I think sometimes songwriting becomes diluted when you have lots of components to mask a lack of core.
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By the time I wrote those first three songs for his new CD ... I wanted to push the poetics as hard as I could push them, and not decide the songs were finished until I committed them to whatever the recording format was. I went through drafts right up until I recorded every single one of them.
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With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.
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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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What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!
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I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn't have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don't want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that's really where the work is.
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Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.
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I swear I have at least one good song idea a day. But if I don't get pen to paper in ten seconds, it's gone forever.
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I get to play with pop music and mix up the style. It's fun to play with party music and nice to get into the club. My big love is songwriting. I write the lyrics and the vocals, and I work with the producers.
