Quotes About Songwriting

I think there are a lot of artists that are very traditional. I think someone can be a fan of someone like Josh Turner and then turn around and be a big fan of someone like Taylor Swift because, at the end of the day, it's all about those songs. I feel like country music has the best songwriting and the best songs of any genre.

I've really been writing a lot of country songs. I used to get criticized for doing a 'Bump & Grind,' then turning around and doing a gospel song. But the truth is I'm glad I have a gift that allows me to switch lanes.

It's not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you're looking for songs all year long and you're writing all year long.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I've always had something turning in my brain. And it got to a point where I felt it was stupid to let some of the tunes die. So I began putting them down on paper.

Most of my songs are inspired by both falling in love and heartache. And it was a turning point for me as a singer and songwriter as it dawned on me that I wasn't being honest enough about what I truly feel.

I don't want to live in an ivory tower, being the songwriter who just turns inward.

I think often times if a guitar riff is centered around the chorus or if it follows the chorus, then it often times turns into the actual hook.

My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase.

I just love music. I love writing songs. It's not even a job; it's a gift. I'm waiting for someone to kick me out of the party because I snuck in here, and I keep thinking somebody's going to figure out that I have no clue. Turns out that most of them have even less of a clue.

I wrote 'She's a Lady' on the back of a TWA menu, flying back from London after doing Tom Jones's TV show. Jones's manager wanted me to write him a song. If I have an idea and I don't have a pad of paper, I'll write on whatever is available. What's the difference? Paper is paper.

I was writing waltzes at a time when the most popular thing was Shania Twain and the very pop edge of country. I didn't really know how to do much of that.

I wrote 'Despacito' with my guitar, but where you can tweak a lot is in the production.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

When I first started writing songs, I was probably about ten or twelve years old, and the first thing you think as a songwriter is, 'Can this be a hit? Can this come out, and people are going to hear the song and like the song, and then they're going to like you, and you'll get famous and rich?' That hasn't changed a bit.

I was a cover artist for years. I didn't start writing songs until I was in my mid-twenties. I wrote them with John Leventhal, and they were pretty bad. I was in my late twenties when I wrote the first song with him that made any sense to me about what I was rooted in and what spoke for me as an artist. That was 'Diamond in the Rough.'

A lot of times Mick will play me different things, or I'll listen to a cassette, and out of twenty ideas or whatever, I'll find two or three that are just blowing me away, and we'll start working on them right away.

That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.

I wanted to be a songwriter.I didn't so much want to be a performer.I more grew into that just from being a songwriter.

If guys don't want me to write bad songs about them, they shouldn't do bad things.

My husband doesn't know what my songs are about - even when they're about him. He's very British in that way. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't want to be told.

I've been doing musical theater since I was a kid. And look for a CD from me in the future. I want to write all the songs!

I don't ever try to anticipate my audience. I just write the songs I want to write, and hope people like 'em.

No matter how long what I'm doing here lasts, I want to be a songwriter for the rest of my life. I love it and it's my escape.