Quotes About Lyrics

I tend to explain my songs.

When I'm writing Broadway, it's for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you're talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you're expressing that through a character.

There were a lot of lyrics that I sang but didn't understand. But I had this facade in performance of looking like I wrote the book.

I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.

I like to write in fairly everyday language - I've always tried to write lyrics that, if people would speak the words, it wouldn't sound like a song.

'Love Will Tear Us Apart' is very simply written.

There's always room to make stuff that is completely morose and downbeat, but we'd probably spiral into a state of complete despair if our music reflected the lyrics all the time. I think that's almost the fun game with some songs, is this complete tearing of two feelings at once.

For the chorus of 'Secrets,' we used The Romantics' 'Talking in Your Sleep' and 'Pale Shelter' by Tears for Fears. It's like hip-hop: just grab it.

Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song. Until I heard 'Little Earthquakes' all my lyrics used really obvious analogies like rain for tears.

When I think of CeeLo Green, I think about previous collaborations, like 'Tears of Joy.'

The lyrics of 'Ekla Akash' brought tears to my eyes.

As a firm believer in the power of songwriting, I feel privileged to be part of a team that continues to help us all understand the true force and impact of lyrics and music around the world. Genius is special - it's remixing the digital playbook and owning a new space in music and tech.

It's amazing that you can listen to any song and you can always tell when there's some substance beneath it and when there isn't. Even if it's poetically written and technically brilliant, I'd rather hear something that's all over the place but has some soul to it.

I'm a great believer in not over-thinking lyrics. You might become technically better as a songwriter, but you lose what originally made your songs great.

Lyrics mean a lot to me, and I won't record a song unless I can feel it. That's something I learned from Carter Stanley. Even when he wasn't perfect technically, he got inside a song and sold it emotionally.

I think the one I'm most proud of as a songwriter is 'Breaking Your Heart' because it was just a different style for me. It was very - I feel like it was very old-timey Patsy Cline. It's got a very '50s feel to it, and I pushed myself to write those lyrics very intimately with my co-writer Ted Bruner.

I had this talent for these stupid little teenage songs.

I think the stuff that plays on the radio, the majority of it is for teenagers, which is okay. That's what pop radio is about. And some of it is great, and some of it is not.

All my favorite artists were pretty serious in the sense that their music was something I could sink my teeth into, from Peter Gabriel to U2 to these artists that made me want to read the lyrics and dig into it.

I'd much rather talk about guitar playing. I hate it when people ask me about my lyrics. I always feel like telling them to just go and read them.

If I had to compare myself to another artist, I wouldn't. I feel like my lyrics are really strong. I'm good at painting pictures and telling picture stories.

As far as rapping goes, as long as you are telling the truth and you have a good flow, then you win.

Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

I think a song that's got something to say. I'm not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don't last. But I like a song that tells a story and has some meat to it, you know, that means something.