Quotes About Songwriting

Whether it's writing songs, being on stage, being interviewed, meeting fans - I just try to be myself, which is kind of exhausting because it almost feels like it never shuts off.

For 'Narrow Stairs', the majority of the songs I brought in were guitar songs - songs we could sit in a room and just play. I can honestly say I had more fun and felt more inspired on this record than anything that we had done in a long time.

When I listen to and play the songs from 'Narrow Stairs' now, that record feels like a record where we had established a style that arguably was more our own than it was in the beginning. Going into that record, I felt a lot more confident in my songwriting. It was a fairly prolific time for me.

There's a big difference to when you stand up and sing someone else's song, but when you've actually written the song, you feel like you were a part of it, and you're a lot more proud of it.

Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can't rescue a dog of a song.

It's every songwriter's dream to come up with a standard.

What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That's why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it.

There was a period in my life when I was trying to write standards: songs that everybody recorded. I did a pretty good run of it.

I was always trying to write standards, songs that anybody can sing. I figured that's where the money was.

'Never Forget You' was the first song I co-wrote.

The juices never stop flowing. I still write songs.

When we were writing songs for the Eagles, Don Henley would be involved in some new love relationship, and he was always excited about them. But we were all waiting for the day that they would break up.

Johnny Andrews can make me fly with his ideas for new songs. It has always been a pure pleasure to write with him.

Amy Winehouse asked me a while ago if I had written any new songs. I played her something, and when I had finished, she looked at me and said, 'Is that it? Is that all you've got?'

I want to encourage Filipino artists to be original, write your own songs and don't be afraid to go outside the box and try new things.

I'm so hard on myself that when I'm in the studio, I'll write 10 songs and only use one. So those nine songs that are left over, I always think, 'Where could these go? Who could they be for?'

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that's what I got back to.

Songwriting is an art distinct from poetry.

Love. He'd written enough lyrics about it, but did he really have any idea what it meant?

Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.

I write my songs many times to chord progressions on a piano. Unfortunately, I can't keep playing the piano, so I just record it into the software.

People who write happy songs are often unhappy.

With 'More Than Words,' we wrote that, so we are that. I'm just happy people can connect with any of our songs. If that song opened the floodgates for us to be able to tour the world over and over, how could I be unhappy with that?