Quotes About Songwriting

When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff.

The process is always the same. I get an inspiration for a new song, I put it down on paper immediately so I won't lose it. When I am ready to go to the studio with it, I play it a few times on the piano and edit, add, and type the lyrics and take it to the studio. Sometimes I don't have anything on paper.

I sometimes write songs on the piano, even though I don't actually play the piano. I always hire someone to play for me whenever I decide to sing a song I have written on the piano. My song 'Rosa' is one.

I don't think I've ever laid out a batch of songs that pick myself apart the way that these do.

Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.

I was writing songs, I guess, a sense of lyricism before I started picking up the guitar. Once I picked up the guitar, I felt I started expressing myself in that medium without words.

So, my records really didn't sell, but musicians started picking up on my sound and my songs and cutting my songs and that turned into a gold mine.

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

I have a folder of scraps and pieces of paper with stuff, ideas for songs from the last 25 years; just little things, maybe early songs that I finished, but didn't think they were good enough.

For the first three years, when I was writing, I was doing sessions with a whole bunch of different people all the time every day until I met Lindy Robbins, who kind of mentored me. And then, once you find that, all the pieces come together.

I've written songs on everything. Menus. Napkins. Little pieces of paper.

I always have to have what I believe are the pillars of an album - songs which I can go back to and admire personally as a piece of writing.

I just believe in collaboration. I mean, I've written songs on my own, you know, but I think if the artist has something to bring to the table - someone like Pink, for instance - where they have something to say, it makes your job easier and more special.

Sometimes when you get frustrated, your back is against the wall, and you come out fighting and knock out three songs in as many days.

I don't sit down and say, 'Today I will write a song.' I know a lot of people that do that, but if I'm not in the mood, what's the point of beating my head against the wall?

Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

After a casual listen, it might be easy to lump Rocky Votolato in with the downtrodden likes of Conor Oberst and Elliott Smith. But his songwriting is a bit more triumphant than theirs: Votolato would rather pull himself out of a gutter than wallow in it, focusing instead on the victory before the misery.

I have to strip away all the layers when I'm writing the song. I have to cut through all these layers of years of putting up walls and putting protective layers around myself.

As I'm writing a song, I focus on the music and try not to let my mind wander too much, but if I do think of any visual moments or references that I think would connect nicely, I'll make a note of it.

Do you think I'm wandering around all day thinking, 'I must write a song called 'Three Coins In The Fountain'?' Only an idiot would do that.

Making sounds that literally no one has ever heard before because the software and the technology's never been there, and pairing that with great songwriting, then that's what's exciting for me. That's what I wanna do.

The 'I Wanna Dance' hook actually came to me when I was in bed and just in that lucid moment between consciousness and sleep... I jumped out of bed and recorded a voice note of the vocal hook and I went into the studio the next day fully inspired.

If I'm writing a tune with someone I'm making sure it's what they wanna say and it's articulating what they have to share.