Quotes About Songwriting

I think it says wonders about people that can write an entire album, and put out an entire album of great songs. I mean, the Brad Paisley's, Alan Jackson especially, even Taylor Swift - those people can really pen great stuff.

I wish I was a prolific writing wondrous boy genius - I wish I was Stevie Wonder - but I wasn't. I was me. I wrote terrible songs about girls I was head-over-heels about. As soon as a pretty girl looks at me, that's it - I'm in love, and I should probably write a song about it!

I think, when I started writing songs, my voice just became another tool. It wasn't something that I was going to try desperately to woo a listener. As long as I'm using my voice in a way that helps people understand what I'm trying to say, then I feel like I'm doing all right.

I've always been a big fan of how Woody Guthrie wrote political songs like 'This Land is Your Land.'

I'm definitely a fan of juxtaposition. Using the most beautiful line to say the most horrific thing - I think one of the main things in songwriting is definitely friction between the words and the melody.

I think throughout the day; there are always lines or certain words, and I'll just keep notes in my phone. It might just be one or two words, and then that could inspire a whole song, lyrically.

Call me old fashioned, but I love songs that end. As a songwriter, I feel like you put a fade out when you can't work out how to end a song.

When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.

Yes, basically, like you said, I'll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.

Certainly, writing a book was challenging. It took me a long time to learn how to do it. It took me seven years to get a sense of how to wean myself off the process and trickery of songwriting. You realize that giant metaphors work in songs because you have so few words. Standing alone on a page, they threaten to be overblown in a hurry.

That's the way I've always been, between the albums: For two- or three-year gaps I wouldn't pick up a guitar. And when I don't pick up a guitar for a year or two, that's when the songs fall out.

If I can't sing them myself, there's nothing better than writing songs for other people and watching them be performed. It's kind of more thrilling than doing it yourself.

When we were doing 'Live at Benaroya,' the song 'I Will' was hard to get through. I've always get a big lump in my throat when I sing that song. And also 'Before It Breaks.' So I'm just a different songwriter now. And the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to deliver those songs casually.

I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight.

I'd write songs like 'One Big Holiday,' and we'd play it and say, 'It's too heavy for 'At Dawn.' Let's save it for the next one.' We had more time for that, but when you mix a song, the general rule of thumb for us is a song a day or usually a day and a half.

I was a Kimya fan for a long time, a Moldy Peaches fan, so I got to work on her 'Thunder Thighs' record a little bit and we became friends and just started writing songs.

By the time we made "Abbey Road", John and I were openly critical of each other's music, and I felt John wasn't much interested in performing anything he hadn't written himself.

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.

A songwriter's supreme challenge is being complex and simple at the same time

Most of us have the residue of thousands of songs in our ears, that if you end up songwriting, I think you're mostly smoking the residue of all that material you absorbed over time.

It is not fun singing about losing somebody like that, but at the same time it was easy to write because the memories were so real and vivid and so much a part of who I am.

I don't write my own songs. I don't have time.

While I'm playing baseball, I'm still writing songs and having tapes sent to me. I'm sure I'll spend a lot of time in the whirlpool resting these tired bones, so I'll be thinking of music then.