Quotes About Songwriting

Elton John and Billy Joel, I find them both to be huge inspirations, those guys are so talented.

You need to understand that a skilled professional songwriter can accelerate your success as an already talented musician. These people are writing every single day, so their craft is really sharp, and it's the best songwriters who consistently get on the radio.

My daughter is far more talented than me in the songwriting department - far more.

That's how a lot of Tame Impala songs start out - as ideas for songs I could potentially give to someone else. I think of them with a different persona in mind; it's just a subconscious way of not being bound by what you think you are as an artist.

Me becoming a person, instead of somebody who just hides and is afraid, has happened in tandem with me learning to write music and become a good songwriter.

The songs keep on writing themselves, and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion.

If you were to say to me that you needed a romantic and sentimental song in four hours, I would have that song written in four hours.

I'm not used to writing about happy emotions, I'm just used to pulling from my sad or angry - happy emotions are very hard for me to portray in music.

The only instrument I can play is piano. Whenever I make songs at home, I play the piano and make them on the piano.

I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn't that spectacular.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

I don't tell 'U.S. Weekly' which parties I'm going to. I write songs.

There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.

Mostly, in song writing, my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes. But the urge to write is something you have to have. A conviction, an ambition to write and never stop until you think, 'This is the best I can do.'

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

Sometimes I get in writing moods and I want to write a song every couple of days. Then sometimes I may not write a song for three weeks. It's just according to how it's hitting me at the time.

When I was around 13 or 14, I started getting really into songwriting. And one day, I was rooting through my mum's old tapes and records, and I found 'Grace' by Jeff Buckley. I remember so vividly the first time I put it on. It blew my mind: his voice, the way he could play the guitar. I must have listened to the album over and over for weeks.

For my 23rd birthday, I received a nylon string guitar. I told myself that if I could play Eric Clapton's 'Tears In Heaven,' then I could play the guitar. I practised every chance I got, driving my housemates insane, until several weeks later I had a shaky version of the song down. I wrote my first song on the guitar a few weeks after that.

I just write songs from the heart, and you never know who'll like the songs. I try to make sure that I don't allow anybody's expectation to weigh on me. I have my own expectation of life. I believe in letting people be free.

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

Songwriting's a weird game. I never intended to become one - I fell into this by mistake, and I can't get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life.

I'm extremely happy, but I don't do love songs for the most part. It feels weird; that's such a personal thing to me. I'd rather live that in my real life and play a different character outside of that.