Quotes About Songwriting

I've never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that - of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.

I sat in on some songwriting classes, and it was really bloody hard, a lot of music theory. I'd be sitting there, and they'd be talking all this music theory, and the teacher would say, 'Let's ask our guest Jimmy what he thinks,' and I'd be sitting there thinking, 'Please don't ask me, please don't ask me.'

I don't think any songwriter who comes up through playing clubs can really claim to have independently developed their art. All along the way so much information is coming, the writer inside the performer unconsciously reacts to all of that. By the time they get to be thirty, the writer is gone.

I've always had a tendency to keep an emergency exit in a song. I can't remember ever writing a song that is completely and thoroughly depressing; there's always been a way out somehow. A sense of hope in song, regardless of the subject matter.

I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band.

Sometimes, when you are not feeling really good is when you tend to write songs because you are internalising everything, and you are examining your thought process, and you are quieter and quite still, so it is when you write things down.

The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.

The reason we did 'Land of a Thousand Dances' and 'Gloria' on 'Horses' was because I liked repetitious, three-chord rock songs, but I didn't understand that I could write my own. I didn't realize that you could use those chords a million times.

You can get too bogged down in technology and you can sort of forget what it is you were trying to do. And with the Pet Shop Boys it's primarily about the songs, it's about song writing.

I was married at the time when I first joined the band and my wife said: 'Why don't you write a song about me ?' So I wrote 'She's got balls'. Then she divorced me.

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

I'm not one of those people who write all the time. Sometimes I'll go several months without writing anything. I'll sometimes second guess myself and wonder if I'll ever write another song.

I write songs all the time in my room. I play them for my friends and family.

I'm surprised the two of you haven't collaborated on songs since you've been in Fleetwood Mac. You love to write words and he's a nut for melodies. I'm surprised, too. I always wanted to. It's strange. You would think he would ask me, but I think he really doesn't like my lyrics very much. They're too spacev for him. We think differently, I guess.

Songwriting is my main thing. I know that I'll do that for the rest of my life.

It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.

Most of the songs I write just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

And you know there's nothing like writing a song about someone who's mean to you, and just makes your life miserable…and then winning a Grammy for it.

It ( In My Life ) was the first song that I wrote that was really, consciously about my life.... up until then, it had been all glib and throwaway.

I think expression is at it's best when it comes from an honest place, so I always try to use my own life experiences, feelings, struggles, frustrations etc. as the catalyst for my song writing.

I don't really see how any song can not feel contrived if it isn't honest, and how could I write honest songs if I don't write about stuff going on in my life and how I'm feeling?

My attitude these days is, if you write a bad song, what are they gonna do, throw you in songwriter jail?

I don't sit down to write a country song. I don't sit down to write a rap song. I just sit down to write a song, you know what I mean? And I try to make that song the best it can be.