Quotes About Songwriting

Whenever I write a new song, it always happens when I come back from Europe or Egypt or something like that. It's always from travelling.

I'm just like anybody else: I have stuff to do in the day, whether that's writing a song or recording a song. I try to treat everything I do as just work.

I count myself as not only just an artist, not only as a singer, but a business woman. I write my own songs; I write my own video treatments, manage other artists. I write for other artists; it's not just about getting on stage and singing a song.

In Mudcrutch we all wrote songs, and when it got to the focus on Tom and the Heartbreakers, I kept writing songs, but it wasn't anything that was up the Heartbreakers tree, I didn't think - and I don't think they did, either. So I kept writing songs for the hell of it, but I didn't want to make a record just for the sake of making a record.

I get on my porch with my guitar, look at my trees, and write a song.

The very first song I ever wrote was called 'I See Between The Trees,' when I was 9. It was really bad.

I could speak Spanish fluently growing up, but I'm so out of practice, and I have such a tremendous respect for songwriting in the Spanish language.

I really like this trend of songwriting that is honest and intelligent and serious and longing.

Songwriter friends will be like, 'Oh my God, when are you going to put out 'Love Triangle?'' It's just been that song for me that really helped me get a lot of writing sessions and helped jump-start my writing career.

If I write for beauty and truth, the songs will find their way to me. Then, it's the songs that speak to the audience, and they can become part of the tribe that is into what I do.

I have a knack for writing tribute songs for people who will never know about them.

Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.

Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.

I wrote a thousand songs a day.

A couple of days working with Joe Jonas, I thought, 'This guy is a slayer of a singer; he's really funny, goofy, and sexy. We need to write that.' And that led to 'Cake By The Ocean.'

I do write songs with a political dimension to them sometimes, but I'm always slightly appalled by it when I do.

A lot of people start by learning other people's songs, but the idea of singing someone else's music didn't excite me. I just wanted to write my own. It was really bad to begin with. It's improved slightly since.

I've always loved melody and pop hooks, slightly left of centre but I have always tried to balance it with songs that have lyrics you can sing along to.

We come up with slogans on the road and then we start putting them on the songs.

When I first started writing, I wrote really sad, emotional songs which were all slow.

When it comes down to the song writing, I'm just very slow - very slow. Because the songs are about my life, so I'm doing emotional work on myself.

I write really slowly, and my lines are really, really terrible all the time. It takes so long for me to get them to be where I won't be embarrassed to sing them, and then feel like they're great.

I just write notes all day on my phone, and when I write songs it becomes a patchwork of these smaller notes that I had, mixed with stuff in the moment.

I feel like you're able to be your most creative in private environments, and not a studio where an A&R person is coming in, telling us a song isn't a smash.