Song Quotes
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I do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that's the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I'm writing. But I'm learning how to play keyboard better now so that'll start serving the song as well; it'll be another flavor. I'm not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah...
Mac DeMarco
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The process depends on the situation, and I don't think there are any two songs that have gone exactly the same way... well, actually, that's not true.
Michael McKean
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I'm awful at karaoke, but if I did have to sing, I'd go for my favourite Frank Sinatra song 'I've Got You Under My Skin.' The fact I love Frank is my grandfather's doing: he drummed it into me from a very early age that Frank Sinatra is God.
Matt Smith
Poison
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I was sixteen, I became a working guitar player gigging in LA, mostly in top 40 bands, then touring. I learned to take songs apart, down to their bones. Songwriters would hire me to produce their demos, which lead me to become a songwriter. The relationship and power music has to TV and film attracted me to composing [and] I learned to write for instruments other than guitar.
Danny Jacob
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When the sun is shining, the right song is on, and I'm with people I love.
Cynthia Addai-Robinson
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Music allows a person to express their deepest thoughts, thoughts that cannot be expressed with just words. I am often asked how I begin a song or develop a melody from nothing. That is the spiritual aspect of creating. Finding something deep within yourself that can only be created by you.
Bradley Joseph
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I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together.
Eddie Vedder
Pearl Jam
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I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.
Neil Young
Buffalo Springfield
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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.
Stephen Sondheim
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I do a lot of stuff for free anyway. Like a lot of people who you see who don't need money. Mick Jagger - he needs money? He just likes to go sing Satisfaction every night. If I wrote that song I probably would do it too.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
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There are days when I'm completely obsessed with Kate Bush, and there are days when I'm completely obsessed with the Eurythmics. Then it's Aretha Franklin, then it's Lena Horne, then it's Ella Fitzgerald, then it's John Legend, then it's Michael Jackson. Music, to me, is like food, so I feel like whatever I need that day, I can get from a song.
Cynthia Erivo
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I probably couldn't have the same experience listening to that song because I'm self-conscious about some of my singing parts.
Babatunde Adebimpe
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The first thing that inspires me is my mood, but I take inspiration from a lot of things: a rock song, a romantic movie or a specific lifestyle, like 1960s London and, of course, Italian 'dolce vita!'
Chiara Ferragni
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The songs are inspired by my experiences. Sometimes they are more than my real-life and, conversely, my life is more than just my songs.
Melissa Etheridge
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I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.
Stephen Sondheim
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After that song came out, a lot of girls wanted to change their name to Julie... God bless 'em!
Bobby Sherman
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Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.
Henry Louis Gates
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In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
Stephen Sondheim
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What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.
Nick Cave
The Birthday Party
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And your eyes must do some raining if you're ever gonna grow / When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself / It's best to compose a poem, an honest verse of longing / Or a simple song of hope.
Conor Oberst
Bright Eyes
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What I do now is all my dad's fault, because he bought me a guitar as a boy, for no apparent reason. ... I wrote some of my best love songs ever when I was unhappy and my saddest love songs when I was very much in love. When I wrote 'You're in My Heart', which is an uplifting song, I had just broken up with-Now who had I broken up with?. ... Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It's the image, not what you sing.
Rod Stewart
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As a horn player, the greatest compliment one can get is when a person comes to you and says, 'I heard this saxophone on the radio the other day and I knew it was you. I don't know the song, but I know it was you on sax.'
Clarence Clemons
