Quotes About Songwriting

Great stories start with great opening lines. 'I'm a lineman for the county' - what a great way to start a song.

I try to make everything I write a little bit different. Those songs that go, 'I love you so much and you love me,' they're boring. If I'm going to write a love song, it's going to be a little bit tortuous.

I borrowed a guitar at age 16 and taught myself to play because I wanted to write songs.

At the age of eight, I discovered that I could write songs. My dad used to take them to the notary and register them so that nobody could steal them from me.

You can get too bogged down in technology and you can sort of forget what it is you were trying to do. And with the Pet Shop Boys it's primarily about the songs, it's about song writing.

one of his first creative contributions on linking up with Mick Jones was to change the title of a love song called "I'm So Bored with You" to "I'm So Bored with the USA.

Once I got into pop songwriting, I was kind of just ready to help other people tell their stories... I'm here to facilitate and structure and grow and make things a little more fabulous and a little more urgent.

It's very easy to think about rhymes and just usage of words that sound good but don't mean anything. Basically, I try to put into song the way people actually talk.

Sometimes I'm just giving, and giving to people who aren't always deserving. But I've learned to listen and approach people without judgment. I've had so many conversations with so many different kinds of people - it's opened my heart, which is useful when I'm writing songs.

I think I subconsciously put myself in these situations where the girlfriend isn't pleased with me. I'm useless as a boyfriend. That's how I managed to write all these songs.

As part of Depeche Mode, I don't think it's right for me to be using my own songs for a solo project. I'm not a very prolific songwriter, so I keep those for Depeche Mode.

I always have to be thinking about who's going to be singing this song, what the context is. I don't sit around just writing in a vacuum, ever.

When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do.

One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what's being said than is there. That's the great thing about Bob Dylan's songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.

When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.

If somebody sings a song that I wrote, I feel like it's a nice point of validation for the song, because it shows that the song is able to stand on its own. I like that.

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 thought it would be fun to write a song where a bunch of my favorite guitarists contributed, so I started 'Valley of Fire.'

I don't really have any "must work withs," but I would never refuse if a celebrity or fellow musician came along who is willing to write or sing or play on a Lita song.

The phrasing didn't work as well.

Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.

I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.

I really believe in myself. I'm the hardest worker I know, and one of the best songwriters. There's a craft to it, and it takes a long time to hone it, and I work really hard at it.

I want to write songs with meaning. I have high standards for my work.