Lyric Quotes
One thing a lyricist must learn is not to fall in love with his own lines. Once you learn that, you can walk away from the lyric and look at it with a reasonable degree of objectivity.
Hal David
If I play anything that sounds like a solo, it's gonna sound like a lyric.
Adam Jones
The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.
James Broughton
I grew up the biggest fan of the Cure. Knew every lyric, had every album, B-side, single, poster, everything. Then cut to fifteen years later, and we're working on songs together. Ridiculous.
Mark Hoppus
Blink-182
I want to suggest a feeling. It's ridiculous to assume you can state an opinion. Somebody else can never relate to the lyric in the same way because their whole experience is different. You can only suggest, then people add their own history and experience to the lyrics.
Danielle Dax
Music is my catharsis for that. It's an incredible blessing that I have this way of expressing myself through music and lyric, and I'm so grateful for that in moments of pain or of suffering - that I have this means of channeling it; it's really amazing. My band as well - having them around and being able to jump on stage and bond together and share that energy is really uplifting as well.
Kimbra Lee Johnson
This 'Making Mirrors' album is far more personal, even if there's a character element to the sounds I'm working with. Every song on this album I stand behind; I feel like I have a close relationship with them. There are older songs where I can feel myself writing a story, so this is the first album where I'm proud of every lyric.'
Gotye
I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be.
Chris Cornell
Soundgarden
Enormous enlargements of an object or a fragment give it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new lyric and plastic power.
Fernand Leger
I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around on my keyboard and my computer until I have a beat or a chord progression, I'll record it as a loop, export it to iTunes, then walk around with the loop and sort of talk to myself in the loop, and that's how I get the lyrics.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
My chutzpah was me singing to Mario Lanza. So Mario looked at me after I talk-sang 'Be My Love' for the first time; he took the lyric out of my hand as contemptuously as you can take a lyric out of someone's hand, and he sang 'Be My Love' back at me.
Sammy Cahn
In those days, it didn't take much imagination to come up with something that required great lyric development skills. You just thought of an experience that you might have gone through, and write it down.
Phil Harris
It was a little at a time but I broke out my Walkman and my lyric pad and started writing.
Lou Gramm
Foreigner
Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that's fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.
Bryan Adams
Publishing the lyric books, poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into!
Frank Iero
My Chemical Romance
Anything is food for starting a song. A song can start with a lyric idea or a melody or just a sound that inspires.
Alison Goldfrapp
When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!
Alma Gluck
Naming something, putting it on record, in a lyric, feels like affirming people. Ideally, that's what politicians should want to do: to put laws or policies in place that speak to people's experiences, to make them feel heard.
Jamila Woods
When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.
James Fenton
Before I start, like to make sure I'm smart. Gather my composure, rather my swagger and my couture.Pivot my fitted, then begin to rivet, with a change of lyric. In other words, I reposition how I sit it. Then make you feel it, like I mispronounced 'filet.'
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco
I have a lyric journal that I write in a lot. When I'm going to play, I just sit down and have my books with me and my notes and tapes and whatever I need to refer to. I just play and try different things. It's a kind of discipline.
Amy Ray
A lot of writing I do on tour. I do a lot on airplanes. At home, I write a lot, obviously. When I write a song, what I usually do is work the lyric out first from some basic idea that I had, and then I get an acoustic guitar and I sit by the tape recorder and I try to bang it out as it comes.
Pete Townshend
The Who
