Quotes About Songwriting

I don't think about Norfolk as I write songs, sadly no! But things like 'High' is a song about watching the dawn come up over the sea, and I've had many of those situations.

The-Dream was like my diary. I would sit there and talk his ear off about all my guy situations; he would just turn my stories into songs.

I had to embrace just basically writing and recording on my laptop. On long drives through the Rockies, I would take my laptop and mess around with ideas and make rough sketches of songs.

In those days, it didn't take much imagination to come up with something that required great lyric development skills. You just thought of an experience that you might have gone through, and write it down.

I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.

I love to write songs and sing them, and I didn't really know much more than that. Somehow it's gotten to the point where a friend can say, "It's very you," and that made me feel good.

I love the pursuit of songwriting, and I've seen what songs can do in people's lives. Some of the stories that come back from songs flying around the globe are so encouraging.

Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.

I don't write songs about a specific, elusive thing. I write about love, and everyone knows what it is like to have your heart broken.

I've written good love songs when I have been in love and I've written good love songs when I haven't.

I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.

I've been writing songs since I was 10 years old and always had a penchant for rhyming. I started listening to hip hop through my friends and fell in love with it.

I think if I could ever write with someone, I'd love to write a song with Loretta Lynn or Dolly Parton.

I'm a really huge John Prine fan; I love his clever conversationalist songs.

I would love to make a bunch of country demos and write country songs for really great country singers.

I love writing songs. I'm a songwriter.

People are going to say, 'Well, it's not very truthful.' But a songwriter doesn't care about what's truthful. What he cares about is what should've happened, what could've happened. That's its own kind of truth. It's like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.

Sometimes people ask songwriters what a song means, not realizing if they had more words to explain it they would've used them in the song.

My songs aren't dreams. They're more of a responsive nature… To me, when you need them, they appear. Your life doesn't have to be in turmoil to write a song like that but you need to be outside of it. That's why a lot of people, me myself included, write songs when one form or another of society has rejected you. So that you can truly write about it from the outside. Someone who's never been out there can only imagine it as anything, really.

I heard Nirvana, and discovered that songs could be like poetry, but a little bit more refined: you didn't have to have 20 verses to get your point across.

Obviously, writing together is very intimate because it's sort of acting where you need to get to a really deep place to get the most emotional song.

I have, like, 1,000 voice memos on my iPhone.

I'm an Irish guy who loves his music.

To me and my band, guitar riffs are what it's all about. We know that every time we jam on a great riff, we've got a fighting chance of writing a great song!