Quotes About Songwriting

Lennon and McCartney became great songwriters because they were prepared to listen to and learn from all types of music.

It took me 29 years to finish that song. That's a typical Jardine move.

I've been writing songs all along, and since moving to Nashville in the late-'80s, I'd begun writing something like 15-20 songs a year, instead of the typical three or four in previous years.

When I sit down to write a song, there is no filter. I'm not trying to write for anyone or anything specifically. It's just trying to capture a little piece of your soul - even if it's a really ugly part.

Rather than writing about my experiences with other people, 'Ugly Cherries' is the first song I've ever written about myself. It's a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care.

The first songs I ever wrote - my first, like, serious offerings - were all written on ukulele. It's always been a part of the way I write for a really long time.

I always have a guitar or ukulele in the trailer, and I write songs. That keeps me in an artistic mind-set.

I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

I was playing a lot of Coldplay before the world knew who I was, before anybody knew my 'Umbrella' song. Those songs still stick in my head. I just love it. It's without pop culture, it's just a song. It's just singing.

If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song about it, and you won't like it. That's how I operate.

But no matter what love throws at you, you have to believe in it. You have ot believe in love stories and prince charmings and happily ever after. That's why I write these songs. Because I think love is FEARLESS.

All of my songwriting success happened within a four month time span, and my record label deal happened within the next three months.

You never know what little idea or joke, what flame flickering really quickly, will become a song. That first idea, it can come any time. If it's in Spanish, you go on in Spanish. If it's in French, French. If it's in English, English. Or Portuguese. I'll try to do my best. I like Italian, though I don't speak it much.

I feel there are Sparks songs that are somehow both commenting on a song while at the same time being the song. In a sense, this is breaking down the fourth wall of hiding behind the traditional song form and speaking past the song to the listener.

In my opinion, that's one of the hardest things to do in songwriting: crafting a song that speaks to you but, at its core, is a simple concept.

Country music was the music I was brought up on. It's the music that's closest to my heart and the music that speaks to me the most, and it's always been a big influence on my own songwriting.

I grew up in the era of Britney Spears, where artists had songs written for them, and you got up and sang them. That's how I always thought it was.

Most of my songs have names of people I've met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.

I think artists are aware that talking gives a songwriter so much material. If they just tell us what's happening, it's so much easier for us to write a song that's specific to them.

That's what I love about songwriting - that you can write something about your own experiences and think it's completely specific to you, and then people can take away a completely different meaning for themselves. I really love that. I think you've been successful at writing a song when it has a larger life than yourself.

I don't really set out to please anybody, and I don't think I ever have. I have occasionally been encouraged to try to write something specifically for the purpose of releasing it as a single to get radio play. Those are not my best songs, as a rule.

I don't specifically sit down to write a Motley Crue song, so for me, that's how it works. The things that sound like they might be Crue, I put aside on my hard drive and keep them in that pile.

It was actually working with Kendrick Lamar that pushed me further into the act of songwriting, specifically.

I feel like I really tapped into a pretty honest emotional place for myself as a lyricist. There's a broad spectrum of emotions.