Quotes About Artistry

Selfishly, I make music for me. I like to make music. I like looking for songs. I like working with interesting musicians. I like producing records. It's something I will always do.

I love playing guitar every night, and to be at this point where it's like, the songs are done and I'm happy with the way they are on record, and I get to hear them be reinterpreted by the live band? That's kind of the icing on the cake. It's the best.

I feel like I write songs for the future or something. Not in an arrogant way, but I feel like maybe my songs were, like, before their time or something.

When I think about putting together an album, the process of listening to hundreds of songs each time and picking out the best 10 or so that will go on the record, it really sinks in as to just how many songs I've listened to all these years.

When we played with the Rollins Band, we'd keep songs going until we felt like ending it.

My aspirations aren't to sell millions of records, but to write really good songs.

When I hear the piano played in a compositional way, like in a songwriter's way in a compositional way, there's a certain arc to that that I love.

I'm a songwriter; it's in my nature to express things openly.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

I'm a very slow songwriter; it takes me sometimes years to write one song, if I ever finish.

The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary.

What formed me as a musician, a songwriter, the sound and personality of my band, a whole lot of that happened well before 1991.

As a songwriter, pop music really is a love and a joy and a science, and I feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural.

I never considered myself a songwriter, but now since I've been working with Nick Lowe, I am contributing to an extent. But I'm the guitarist and he's not, so we compliment each other in a way.

Just knowing how to rap doesn't necessarily mean that you're a good songwriter.

As a songwriter, I've always loved to tell stories. But in my band, it was always about what would make sense for a band to put out.

I'm not really a songwriter - I'm an interpreter. So in a sense I am an actress first and foremost. I act out the songs, and I lead with my heart.

I've always been around musicians and always been the songwriter who doesn't end up playing the music.

I always wanted to be known as a songwriter and not just a songbird.

For me as a songwriter, I love when other people cover my songs.

I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.

When you're a songwriter, you don't have control over which songs get heard and which ones don't.

I only wanted to be a songwriter. I never wanted to be a singer. And I never wanted to be famous.