Quotes About Lyrics

It's unfortunate we've never been just songwriters.

Writing lyrics is part spontaneous, intuitive and part really thought through and carefully analyzed as you write it. It's a mixture of two approaches, and I imagine writing anything is like that, really. Some of it just flows, and you just go with it.

I've always gravitated towards songwriting that happens easily and spontaneously, because those have always been my best songs.

I rap about Memphis and what a dangerous spot that is.

One of my favorite albums in the world is Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska.' Each song has this very distinct character who has something profound to say.

Bob Dylan and John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen, these are soul guys. Bruce Springsteen might not sing like Otis Redding, but he sings with white soul. He's singing and he's writing songs from the bottom of his gut.

I'm into classic rock, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel.

I think I'm alright as a lyricist, you know? But then what will happen every couple of months or so is that I'll hear a song I've never heard before and feel I've gone right back to square one.

'La Marseillaise' sounds best ringing around a packed sports stadium. Its lyrics evoke revolution, conflict, taking up arms, preparing for the fight - everything my music does not! Even in our largely peaceful times, it retains its rousing, martial air that gives it a power that hasn't diminished.

In France, disco was an artistic progression that might not have had the same social stakes. Also, the language barriers - like with hip-hop, in France, the focus is more on the personality, of the flow of the music, rather than the lyrics themselves.

There are so many different things that lend themselves to what makes a song magical, that go beyond just the lyrics or the composition. But arrangement and production and performance have such huge stakes in what makes that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle moment.

When I first started playing metal, lyrically, I sort of related a little bit more to the punk and hardcore scenes, where there was a lot more veganism and straight-edge people and people taking a stance for causes that they believe in.

Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can't rescue a dog of a song.

When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy.

In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.

There's no musical landscape to poetry. It has somewhat of a higher standard than songs, I think.

I was always trying to write standards, songs that anybody can sing. I figured that's where the money was.

'I Used To Love H.E.R.,' from a production standpoint, was a brainchild of the style I developed on 'Soul By The Pound.'

Poetry stands or falls by its music.

Good songs are what a good band is all about. When you have a good song that stands up to the test of the time, that is the most important thing.

I would say there's a lot of similarity between folk and punk. It's written for the common man.

It's not like we wanted to get really political in terms of specific causes, but I think a lot of the lyrics deal with paranoia and feeling like "the man" is in control somehow.

All men that date me have to know that their name may end up in a pop song.

In Phoenix summer is the title, the refrain, And every other verse.