Quotes About Songwriting

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.

I think honesty is an important thing when writing a song. If you can't sing it with conviction, then no-one else is going to believe it.

I've written songs about things that nobody else has ever written about.

I write good songs out of fear... fear of failure. Because if they're not good enough, you feel yourself starting to fall.

With my songs, the question is always, 'Can you pull it off live, alone on just an acoustic guitar?' That's the litmus test. If I can, then it's a song I ought to record. If I can't, it's probably not good enough.

I keep this crazy notebook of song ideas.

I sleep with a notebook next to me, and most nights I sleep with my guitar next to me.

The kids of today have taken over the music business - most of them very young. Simply because they write and jot down a few notes, they have the idea that they can write songs.

Sometimes it might seem like I'm using my songs to give other people pointers. But mainly, they're for me, just little notes to myself that I collected, and the wisdom that I've read. I give myself a lot of advice.

I always take notes on my phone of lyric ideas.

When writing songs, especially if they're kinda semi-true to you, a lot of people hide behind whatever their idea of themselves is in the record, and every now and then, you might make a song that exposes something a little too much about you, and there's a part that doesn't want yourself to be exposed.

I generally write the songs accidentally. They generally come out of nowhere.

In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.

I call it a process of elimination. You're nurturing ideas, and that takes time. What happens is there's so many, what I say, 'great ideas.' What you have to do is try to consolidate them and put them into one song, and then your song becomes eight minutes long.

What my whole object was is not to really sell records. I was trying to sell songs.

The very first song I wrote was about a boy that I was obsessed with.

I do want people to know that the songs that I wrote when I was with women were really about women. And the songs that I've written since have been fairly obvious about men.

I try not to write two songs about the same thing, although, on occasion, it happens, so I guess it kinda helps to change stuff up.

If the redeemed sing, presumably someone must write the songs.

When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why the fans are there.

I made more money out of writing those four songs for Ozzy than I made out of fifteen years of Motörhead – ludicrous, isn't it!

I've woken up from dreams and the whole song is there. I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.

When you write a song like 'Forrest Gump,' the subject can't be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

A lot of people from my generation can't write songs anymore, or it's really hard and it's an unpleasant experience. I don't feel that way at all.