Quotes About Songwriting

I am emotionally confused, which enables me to write songs.

Even in those early years of Static-X, there was a pattern emerging where I would spend all my free time writing songs for Static-X and the other guys in the band spent their free time working on their other projects.

When I first started writing songs, I did play with my fingers, and I had these kind of weird strums. There's, like, three or four strumming patterns that seemed kind of unique to me.

When I write songs, I like to write lyrics first, and I think that's different from a lot of singer-songwriters. But I heard Sammy Cahn was asked what comes first, the lyrics or the music, and he said, 'The paycheck.'

IU and I hosted a music program together, and she had told me that she would be writing a song for me. My fans call me 'Peach,' so when her new song came out, I called to ask her about it, and she confirmed that the song was for me.

I've never been able to sit down with a pen and paper and kind of craft out a song, or really force anything out. It always has to come almost subconsciously.

When I write, I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert.

You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.

Melody is the single most important thing to any song, period. I don't care what anybody says, it trumps everything. Not because that's my opinion but because I think it's actually indisputable fact. The human brain retains melody easier than it retains words. It's that simple.

It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.

I've gone periods of maybe four months without writing anything, but it's not a problem. It just means something's building inside you, and it'll build and it'll build, and at some point it'll come out, and it does, and it usually comes out in three or four songs, and you play it that way, really.

There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.

When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.

There's a lot of vulnerability in songs - I'm not talking about pop songs - from people that are in the art of songwriting more than the commercial enterprise of it.

I'm never nervous about being vulnerable with my songwriting because my favorite artists are ones that are vulnerable. I want people to feel like they know me.

I think my favorite artists are honest artists, and as a songwriter, that's what you have to do. You have to be willing to put yourself out there in a really vulnerable way.

Chuck is definitely my favorite co-writer, and my best. It is really hard to make yourself vulnerable enough for somebody to get inside your head while songwriting. Chuck and I find writing together very non-competitive and just really easy.

The '80s, no matter what kind of wacky fashion or whatever else that went on in the '80s, the songs that came out of it, there was really great songwriting, in my opinion.

I think, with age, you learn that it comes in bursts and you've got no control over it. I'm not one of those people who says, 'I've got to write a song every day.' I just store up ideas, and really I have to wait until it finds me; I know when I'm ready to write. It used to frustrate me, but it doesn't any more. It's just how it is.

For me, songwriting is something I have to do ritually. I don't just wait for inspiration; I try to write a little bit every day.

Songs are out there - they're waiting to be grabbed. I start with a phrase, musical and lyrical, words like 'I don't think so' and a nice riff. It rolls from there.

The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.

When I start working on a batch of tunes - like roughly 10 solid tunes - I always know there'll be another 10 to follow, because for every song I invest a lot of time in, there's another song waiting behind it.

You can't manufacture inspiration, so a lot of it is still a waiting game for me. There's still a lot of mystery to songwriting. I don't have a method that I can go back to - they either come or they don't.