Quotes About Songwriting

I got a call from my manager who told me Diplo was working on a country project. I put my vocal on the songwriting demo and my team sent the song to his team. Evidently they fell in love with it... and the rest is history.

I never start a song at the beginning; I always start in the middle, working with the original concept. That might be a loop or a vocal hook. A weird noise or a string sample. Once that's at the heart of the song, I work concertina-fashion, expanding the song forwards to the end and backwards to the beginning.

Because I'm a Christian, when I write things are going to have a certain flavor. When you're writing songs you try to be careful. You make sure there are no conflicts with what you believe, especially when you've been real vocal about being a Christian.

When I first started writing songs, I never intended on singing. I didn't really consider myself a singer at all. I was just kind of recording the demo vocals as a holding place until someone else came and sang.

I grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired.

There's not a whole lot to do in Athens. When I was 13, I just started entertaining myself by writing songs. I'd sit in my room for 10 hours playing the same song, stacking vocals, trying out different drum beats, realizing no one would ever hear this but having so much fun. I guess I got my voice from just doing that so often.

For 'The Anthem,' a lot of my fans were like 'Oh, man, he's getting lazy making just, like, a pop format tune that everyone's doing these days.' But on this album, I wanted to write songs with vocals that would get stuck in my head, not just movements of instrumentals.

You get some confidence in your songwriting abilities and go for the essentials - guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Those are the basic band essentials that have to be in place before you go any further.

I had my first band. it was kind of a progressive metal band kind of thing. I just started writing songs that required more and more challenging vocals, and I just did them. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So I just sort of did what I had to do to make the songs sound the way I wanted them to.

I have a really feminine voice, but I also feel quite powerful when I write. So my songs feel heavy, and that's how Banks sounds. It's a really short, powerful sound. It almost sounds masculine, and I like having that dichotomy.

I feel like, throughout 'True Romance,' I was unsure of myself in terms of songwriting. Even though it was my voice, I feel there were a lot of other voices on that record, too.

There's never been a song that I just wrote and tried to send to an artist.

I sometimes don't know what songs are about for several years after I've written them.

I've written songs for Shirley Bassey, Marianne Faithfull, and Linda Thompson. I sort of focus on these wonderful, aging divas. But maybe that's because I think I'm Christina Aguilera.

I was writing songs in my room for like six year, not showing anyone.

The first and last song I ever wrote was a ballad I was quite proud of, and one I would play for anyone, anywhere.

If I have the chance, I would like to write an emotional, sad ballad.

I always wrote ballads, and I always wrote rockers.

I don't think anyone would bat an eye if I wrote a song.

I've had writing sessions with people, but I've never had one where you're just there, and you start making a song, and then it's too good to be true that something really cool will come out of this.

As an artist, you need to be true to yourself and free and not put yourself in a box that contradicts with what you feel is needed for a song.

Certainly, the Beach Boys and the early Beatles records were a huge influence on me lyrically.

I'm always making beats, and when I can hear Ezra singing on one of them in my head, I send it to him. That's one of the ways that we've always worked together.

All of my songs are so hyper-specific - that they can seem universal is a beautiful thing.