Quotes About Songwriting

Songwriting wasn't my gift. I think you have to cultivate a gift; you have to practice and develop craft around your gift so that you can execute it in more convenient, efficient ways.

It's a powerful thing to be able to write a song. Even the least powerful feeling - like insecurity - that makes you feel weak when you experience it, when you write about it, you are powerful.

I'm not a hustler. I don't pitch songs. I don't ask people to write with me. It's not what I do.

It's really hard to write personal songs. I'm not good at writing ditties because as far as writing hit songs that you pitch to the national artist, I just don't write that way.

I'd like to write songs for other people, see things from a different perspective. I'd like to watch things from the dugout instead of the pitch.

My favorite song I ever wrote is 'Yeah 3x' because it was my first placement. It was with a great artist, Chris Brown, and I couldn't believe it at the time. Honestly, I still can't really believe it! It is the first time someone ever gave me a shot, so that is my favorite.

I started writing an album on flights to Africa and Brazil, but it was crazy because I left the notebook on the plane. It had seven or eight songs in it. After that, I'm not writing any more songs on notebooks - and I keep my Blackberry close!

So when you're sat there and you're looking at a platinum disc on your wall, for a song you wrote on your own, it's like this is getting crazy, man. It's all crazy.

Some songs take months to get right, but 'Let Her Go' was so easy. I was no more pleased with it than any other song I'd written.

If I'm on a bus and someone makes my blood boil, I'll pocket those emotions and put them in a song.

Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music.

I can write a poem in 10 minutes. I like writing songs; I can write songs in 5 or 10 minutes. My concentration seems very short.

I work on words quite separately to music. They're both ongoing, and I don't ever feel like I'm working in a cycle in that respect, because it's every day anyway, no matter what I'm doing. Then I get to a point when I've collected together enough words that seem like they want to be songs rather than poems, or sometimes not.

'Finally' actually started out as a poem. I always wrote poetry, and pretty soon I figured out that if I could write poems, I could write songs.

I used to write a lot of songs. I was an English major in college. I was a deluded poet for a year. Totally deluded.

When you're singing about love stories, which is most of my songs, it's good to have a lot of information and to have a different point of view.

I love clever lyrics.

I remember thinking that writing love songs was stupid and cliche, and that my job was to not write love songs, because there are enough of them.

I'm not very good at writing songs when I have a lot of clutter in my mind.

I write songs; I record them. When I get enough, and it seems like a coherent piece, I call it an album.

Collaborating on lyrics has never worked for me.

If a song is being written for a woman, there should be a woman in the room collaborating.

I want to be so giving and collaborative, but my best songs were written on my own.

I started writing songs later in life because I just couldn't commit to it before.