Quotes About Artistry

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

I don't find writing easy. That is because I do take great care; I rewrite a lot.

If I were a writer and not a singer in 10 years, I don't know how I'd feel about writing really personal songs and getting someone else to sing them.

We bled writing these songs, we bled in the studio, and now we're out bleeding getting them right live.

I've been writing a lot of sad songs, and I got to the point where I was like, 'You can't write another one or you're lying.'

Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response.

Whether I'm writing solo stuff, electronic stuff, or material for Motley, I just write to write. I come up with it and put things in different piles.

It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.

I didn't even realize I was writing songs - I thought I was just being witty and sarcastic.

I had no idea when I moved to Nashville people just were songwriters. I had no idea. So I guess I was selling myself as a singer when I first moved here. But then right after I first moved, I started writing a lot.

When I was writing 'Shotgun,' it's one of the first songs that's come to me as an image.

I've been writing and composing songs since I was 5 years old.

That has been my outlet and a way to provide for my child - writing songs for myself and for other artists.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'.

Music is an important part of my writing process.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process - maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like 'Lights Please' happens like that.

My actual writing process? I have to just love the beat before I even write on it. I can't force myself to write to a beat that I'm not immediately loving.

I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.

There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process.

Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.

My brother had written 'Ocean Eyes,' and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way - if you can't dance to a song, it's not a song.

I've always written the storyboards for the music videos, and it's been hard working with directors trying to get them to understand what I'm thinking.

But, I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom.