Quotes About Lyrics

Doing the Best I Can' is a sure fire hit. Incredibly commercial. But what could you say about it? Catchy and good to dance to. But 'Nothing Rhymes' is different. A much bigger risk but it was lyrics people could talk about. So that was the one to launch me on.

It's the lyrics that makes a song a hit, although the tune, of course, is what makes it last.

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.

Oh! Moon of AlabamaWe now must say good-byeWe've lost our good old mamaAnd must have whiskeyOh, you know why!

I love sad songs. They say so much. I love country music but even the happy songs sound really sad.

Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer.

These so-called entertainers get rich while the kids who emulate their lyrics and attitude destroy themselves.

A lot of the younger kids now can rap, but they're scared of the crowd. Mastery of that stage is an MC. I don't know if you've seen any great MCs on stage but when you do it's like wow, this is more than the words to rhymes.

I listen to a lot of songs, and they aren't talking about anything. I don't connect with them. I'll listen to something like Musiq Soulchild's 'Just Friends,' and I'm like, 'Wow, I really feel what he's talking about.' That's how I want people to feel about my music.

I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow.

Biggie and Big Pun were the best storytellers of the '90s. I would get wrapped up in the narrative of what they were talking about.

When I first started making music, I was pretty drawn to hip-hop beats wrapped together with super-good lyrics. The most important thing in that is wordplay, so that stayed with me when I started writing songs.

So much of your life is wrapped up in the songs. All the twists come back, and you go back to that place when you were singing it. It's like reading your own diary and being in a time machine.

I am songwriter. I do compose the music of songs that I write in Bengali. But I've never thought of composing for a film. That's a different art altogether.

When I write, it's like choosing which shoes I'm going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal - but I sometimes have to put myself in other people's shoes.

I kind of need to be ambulatory to write lyrics.

Rapping was kind of hard. It's so many words. When you sing you can kind of stretch the words out. I didn't have to write as much as everybody else.

I first write melodies that will make people shiver, and then, I add the lyrics.

I can write a song in about an hour if it's a simple country song.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, 'Oh, that's the hook right there,' I'll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.

Why I got into music was James Taylor, so to see him be a real down-to-earth guy that's unbelievably talented... then to hear him sing those lyrics of 'What I'm Thankful For,' which is a song Ms. Yearwood and I got to write together, that was definitely a highlight of my recording life.

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.

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces.