Quotes About Songwriting

I knew that collaborating on songwriting would be difficult for a lot of people, because I was known very much, for my independence and the fact that I wrote these quirky songs that were not typical structure, not typical sound - you know, really original stuff.

I didn't write this song. Someone was talking in a room. I just wrote down everything they said.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

My first song was a hardcore knock-off of 'Tangled Up in Blue.' It was based on a story maybe I had heard before. I was 13. The woman died in the end - she was sleeping on the railroad tracks. Pretty edgy, ya know.

I have a wonderful piano that I really love: a handmade Yamaha grand. Sometimes I'm sitting there, and it sounds so good that I find some little melody or a phrase that leads me into a song, but probably more often than not, I actually grab a notebook.

The first person that I ever heard sing a song I wrote was Jason Derulo. I was in the studio when he was doing it, and I mean, I've heard that guy's voice my whole life. When he was singing words I wrote, I started kind of choking up, but I tried to be all manly and puff my chest up and be all, 'Yeah, it's not a big deal.'

Yeah, I came in at the end of the Notorious album, played on about five tracks and then we went on a tour. Then we did another album, Big Thing, and then we started writing songs together in 1989.

Paul's the writer. Yeah, I wrote a little of that stuff, but that's just technically true. In spirit, and in essence of the truth, it doesn't matter. So I don't know, maybe I'm being foolish for not being technical. Yeah, I wrote a certain portion of the things.

Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.

I don't avoid anything. In my songs I just choose to talk about certain things, and so yeah, there are some aspects of my character and personality that don't come out.

Music is my first love and the thing that I feel extremely connected to. I feel like I still have a long way to go within that in terms of being able to perform and write songs. But, yeah, I really hope 'The Possession' opens doors for me to do more acting, because I really enjoyed it.

'Reign' is probably the oldest one on the record. I wrote that when I was 19. 'The Dead They Don't Come Back,' which is the last song on the album, I wrote when I was 20, and 'Harlem River' I just wrote last year. It spans from 2007 to 2012.

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

Traditional songwriting, to us, is where the experimental nature comes in. We're all involved with so much outside activity with really hardcore, experimental music-making.

I'm a traditional singer-songwriter. I have a more organic sound.

I basically make my living writing songs, so I've been able to go around in my trailer. If I got tired of a place, I could move on and roam around. It's a nice environment for writing songs, as opposed to sitting at a recording studio console all day.

I almost gave up on 'Door' so many times. I couldn't crack it. It started out as a simple song with just a chorus-verse-chorus. I felt like it needed to transform more.

The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.

Songwriting really kicked in with the guitar. I was going through a lot as a kid. There had been a lot of transitions in my family. So it just became a total therapy, like most artists.

My songwriting process is based on a formula: Color, tone, words. When I hear production, I initially identify the color that resonates with me. From there, I am able to translate the color into tone or emotion, which may depend on a number of things.

I wouldn't exclude writing another song in German, but I don't want to translate songs anymore. We used to sit down and literally translate every song word for word - it was very technical, and the songs would lose so much along the way.

I consider myself primarily a songwriter first, so the goal is to write songs that might be personal, but that people can translate into their own particular life.

What we were doing wasn't about being really good musicians," Lewis says. "It always seemed to me it was about making a song. We're just making a song.

Conley was not, as they say in recovery-speak, a "jackpot drinker," prone to big, messy binges that leave disasters in their wake. "It was more of a controlled, low-level draining of my energies and output," he says. "I could feel my songwriting falling off. I was just having a harder time finishing things, really getting a little stuck.