Quotes About Songwriting

I tend to work on a song, generate ideas, and re-arrange it like five times, and I'm glad I take the time to do that, because I think my original songs come out better.

Songwriting is like working on a jigsaw puzzle, and it doesn't make any sense until you find that last piece. It has to make sense or it doesn't work.

You need to work at the craft of songwriting, but not only the craft. When I see people working both on themselves and the craft, and they combine those things...I just go, That's just fabulous.

I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.

I do look at songwriting as a lot of work. I don't overintellectualize music as a special medium that only some people deserve to do. I think it's something you do if you put the work in.

It's much easier to work on other people's music and play in other people's bands as a guitar player instead of being the main songwriter and singer. That's a really big job to do that.

I don't think there is anything hard at all about having a lot of songs. It makes it easier to be less precious about them, and know that everybody's going to want to work on some of them.

Sometimes when you start writing a song, you dont know where theyre going to lead you. You just kind of follow the ideas that come in. Its all kind of stream of consciousness. Thats whats so fascinating about songwriting. Its kind of magical.

But my strength was in singing and songwriting, which was a new discovery for me when I was 18. And I decided if I pursued songwriting, which is what was closest to my heart, then there would be no competition. I would just live my life being myself and living my dream.

A guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.

I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I've written.

When you've got an extra gear in your head where that's all you do, you've constantly got a little radar up. ... And when something hits that strikes that beeper, hits that radar, it's like my song skills kick right in and go, 'Oh, OK, there's a song in that.' And then I start trying to figure it out.

Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.

Listen to the Beatles' 'Things We Said Today.' Ringo Starr does not play a fill in the entire song. It doesn't need it. 'A Day In the Life' has gorgeous fills, but there, the song needs it. When I play on any record, I'm striving to get where Ringo is. You play what doesn't take you out of the song.

So, I would write songs... I sort of loved it and hated it in the sense that I would be like, it's never good enough, and I didn't think it was that good, but I always kept striving to write better and better stuff.

I think for me to be involved in a festival, there has to be a strong element of songwriting and musicianship.

The music is in the lead here, and a large part of this, I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel a closer bond with the craft of songwriting, stronger than I ever have.

The songs I've written that are the strongest, I'm like: 'I don't know where that came from. It just kind of popped out.' You feel you can't take a whole lot of credit for it. I didn't purposefully will it into existence.

I have a lot of memos in my phone of songs; I've had dreams about a melody. It's always melody first as far as when stuff like that happens - I find that my melodic sense is my strongest asset as a songwriter.

My strongest message is: 'Never give your songs away. Never sign a contract you can't get out of.'

I don't know what makes a guy want to write songs and sing, but if you've got a message, you want to get it across. When I come up with an idea about the way I feel, I can really state it strongly in a song.

That is what intrigues me; songwriting and song structure and expression.

My first song was called 'Portrait.' It would just be poetry, and I really never understood how to write the structure of writing a song. I just knew the feeling, and I knew it was supposed to break and change at the same part, so that's how I write music.

If the chords change a lot over the course of a song, it's better to stay within the same melodic structure.