Quotes About Songwriting

If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.

I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.

There's a song called 'All We'd Ever Need,' which is actually the first song that the three of us wrote together on our first album, and when we wrote that song I didn't have any real experience to pull from.

I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say, 'Which of these things do I want to record?'

Like a Star' has a very simple melody, and when you play it, it's only about three notes for ages, and it's quite boring. But when you hear the chords, the chords are sort of different than the melody, and it's pulling it around and making it mean something else.

I wrote 'Don't Stop' just like I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' - I didn't try to make either a hit. I just wanted to write a song I liked.

The easiest songs to write are pure fiction. There is no limit to how you can tell the story. I find it difficult when I'm replaying an event through a song.

It's different every time you write. Sometimes it might be harder than it was the day before. I don't like forcing it, but sometimes, if you force it a little bit, it helps you to push forward, and you get inspired in a way. I've written songs in an hour. And there are songs that have taken me six months.

I'm not somebody who can tell if the song is good enough to be pushed until I hear what it sounds like after all the bells and whistles are put on it.

I work a couple of hours a day with a guitar or pushing words around, so over time I have a lot of material, so I don't get into this feast-or-famine situation.

I've found an extraordinary thing happens where I flash an entire finished song. I could be walking along, say over that bridge, and I see and hear the whole thing, words and music.

Early on I realized when you write a song about someone, it flatters them on some level, and gives you a lot of room to move within a relationship. A song can kind of get the girl, for sure.

My performing and my singing leave much to be desired, but having other people record my songs is the most flattering thing that can happen.

I write my own songs, and I only see their flaws.

'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.

It's a big plethora of music floating around in my head all the time, and I'll sit there and write a song.

The pre-chorus always flows and the chorus is always a little bit harder for me because I put pressure on myself. I didn't know that there was a proper way to do these things, so I just write what sounds good to me in my ears and then I hope to God that someone else likes it too.

We still play Foreigner songs. I play the songs that I was involved in writing.

The inspiration behind 'Tardy for the Party' was first and foremost my daughter Brielle. She co-wrote the original lyrics when she was nine years old.

Writing songs has always been my first and foremost love, and, you know, whether I continue to have success as an artist or not, I will always write songs.

When I became a parent I forgot about the part of myself which was very emotional, very dour a little depressed - but very good at writing emotional songs.

Maybe out of the fifty top Beach Boys songs, I was probably the co-writer and singing lead on forty of them.

Sometimes, but the year I lived in France I started to write songs.

I love Hank Williams, he's the original emo kid. Some of his lyrics remind me of, like, Promise Ring lyrics.