Quotes About Songwriting

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.

I already had top 10 records before 'Sunshine Superman,' with 'Catch the Wind' and 'Colors,' but this was a real breakthrough for me. It was a consciousness change for songwriting, as people are now saying I initiated the psychedelic revolution with this album, 'Sunshine Superman.'

In advertising, you have a small window to say the most you can. That's what songwriting is. The difference is, you get to put the leaves on the trees and colour 'em in.

Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else's house!

I wrote most of 'Hello in There' in a relay box, which looks like a mail box, only bigger. Sometimes, it was so cold and windy on my mail route that I'd go inside the relay box and eat a sandwich, just to get away from the wind. I remember working on 'Hello in There' inside the relay box.

I've been writing since I came to Nashville when I was 17. I've been blessed to have written with so many of the biggest names around. They took me under their wing and taught me the ways of writing. They saw something special in me, which feels great. Every song on my record is going to be original, and that's just a really cool feeling.

My fondest memories are of being hidden away in Scotland or Spain writing and working on songs for Wings.

People are always surprised to find this out, but the songs that we write, such as 'Winner of a Losing Game' and things like that, tend to be more country than the other stuff that we cut from outside writers.

I write a lot of my music, but not all of it. I have always subscribed to the 'best song wins' theory when making an album.

I find it hard to write really cool texts in German. At some point I had the feeling that it didn't work for me any more. So I'd rather not write any German songs at all than write uncool ones.

I wrote all my songs on my main instruments, and the songs I would record in my bedroom were just acoustic guitar, mandolin, and sometimes bass. I really like the texture the mandolin added to my music, but my fingers were too big to play it... I could only do little riffs and whatever.

It's a good job when you get to have fans come up to you and thank you for writing your songs.

I think some of my previous stuff... I tend to be a bit lazy in songwriting, where I'll just keep the first thing that comes down, and I won't go back and revisit stuff.

As a songwriter, simplicity - what not to do, what not to play - can be the hardest thing to achieve.

I realized probably when I was, like, 20 years old that the hardest thing to do is to write a pop song - not, like, a candy-pop, throwaway pop song.

The first line of the song is always the hardest thing to write. And then after that, the song should - unless it sucks - it should write itself.

I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They've sat in the studio with so many artists - like Ray Charles, for example - and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.

I never stopped recording, but I went through a period where... The one thing that a lot of people don't know is that for as long as I've been as artist, I've been a writer and a producer.

I write all of my songs from scratch, so the one thing I love about EDM is the way a song transforms into a piece of art, and how the different sounds can change the feel of the record.

The one thing about songwriting that's been consistent is that I do it for the love of a good melody.

Great melody over great riffs is, to me, the secret of it all.

When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It's almost theatrical.

I started to see this common theme with the songs that I was writing or co-writing, and it all had this really strong, independent point of view that I had subconsciously been craving from the music scene.