Quotes About Lyrics

The piano has been drinking, not me.

I've heard 'Piano Man.' That song is pretty cool.

The process is always the same. I get an inspiration for a new song, I put it down on paper immediately so I won't lose it. When I am ready to go to the studio with it, I play it a few times on the piano and edit, add, and type the lyrics and take it to the studio. Sometimes I don't have anything on paper.

I tend to write at the piano, but usually the melody and lyrics come first. Like, I'll be in the shower, and I'll start singing, and the melody and the lyric will just come out. Then I'll quickly try to finish the shower, try to remember it, record it on my phone and save it for the studio.

I really hate when I do a great song with great lyrics but my voice just don't fit because of the type of beat I picked.

I paint pictures with my raps.

All roads lead to 'American Pie.' 'As American as apple pie' was the saying. It was some kind of a big American song that I wanted to write, which would be a conclusion for my show and bring all the songs home, which it still does. I can go anywhere I want with American music and come home to that. And it all makes sense.

I think 'American Pie' is great.

In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful.

Influenced by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, McLean proudly wore the mantle of troubadour in the early 1970s, when 'American Pie' topped the Billboard charts, and has never shed the cape.

I was around in 1970, and now I am around in 2015 ... there is no poetry and very little romance in anything anymore, so it is really like the last phase of 'American Pie.'

Mr. Fantasy was the only song that was scribbling on a piece of paper.

I've written songs on everything. Menus. Napkins. Little pieces of paper.

I always have to have what I believe are the pillars of an album - songs which I can go back to and admire personally as a piece of writing.

I am a big Pink Floyd fan. That is where a lot of the concept lyrics come from.

My songs used to be significantly more bizarre. I used to play a big electric piano and a loop pedal. I was really into Regina Spektor, and I liked her narrative lyrics that were quite off the wall. I used to layer things up and try and replicate what I'd been doing with my bedroom recordings.

Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

I like the jarring thing, both in the music and the lyrics. That's why a lot of times our songs have a proper name of somebody. Usually you hear lyrics and something's going on, but it's just song lyrics. But if there's something in it, even a name that you don't associate with a song, it sticks out and becomes less wallpaper.

Before I went to boarding school, I had never read a fashion magazine. I grew up on a council estate in London, and fashion magazines were a luxury item that weren't even on my mind. The closest I got to a fashion magazine was my cousin's 'Top of the Pops' magazines, where we would learn the lyrics to every song and put posters on our walls.

Sometimes my songs wander off a bit and are not always coherent.

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

I speak three languages - English is my third language - so I take my time with lyrics. It's almost like having a conversation with somebody. If it's really important, you want to think about what you wanna say with that person, especially if it's for the last time.

I wanna be able to stand on the stage and hold out the mic and people sing all the lyrics to my song.

I'd rather let the song live and, as I get older, I'm less absorbed with the clothing. The older I get, I just wanna write good songs.