Songwriting Quotes - Page 5

• Songwriting is the cheapest psychiatrist I know.

  Billy Joe Shaver

  Psychiatrist, Knows

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• If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn't just fall from the sky. I work every day at trying to improve my writing, and I really enjoy it. Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a profound effect.

  PJ Harvey

  Fall, Hard Work, Writing

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• I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm damn well gonna do it!

  Geri Halliwell

  Umpires, Damn, Wells

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• Sometimes it takes a good fall to really know where you stand.

  Hayley Williams

  Success, Fall, I Hate You

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.

  Aristotle

  Character, Should, Young

  Aristotle (2016). “Politics”, p.273, Aristotle

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• Songwriting is a very frustrating art form. You have to get on tape exactly what's playing inside your head

  Michael Jackson

  Art, Tape, Form

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• That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Writing, Talking

  Interview with Paul Zollo, americansongwriter.com. January 9, 2012.

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• My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

  Dave Grohl

  Hands, Listeners, Extending

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• I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you're starting to kill yourself artistically.

  Pete Seeger

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• I think that talent, good songwriting and passion, will always outlast hype.

  Beau Bokan

  Passion, Thinking, Hype

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• Music is spiritual. The music business is not.

  Van Morrison

  Funny, Music, Spiritual

  "The Times" [London], July 6, 1990.

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• Besides my fast and slooow songs, I further divide my work into three main song types: the ballad or story song, the variation on a theme (saying the same thing over and over and over again) song, and the weird song. It's important to have weird songs, but I find that a little weirdness goes a long way.

  David Massengill

  Song, Writing, Long

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• Glen Campbell told me, 'Stay out of the way of a good song.' I think it's true. If a song's good, don't overdo it.

  Chris Isaak

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• I think it was Tommy who told me, 'When your song is called 'XYZ' or whatever, every line has got to make sense against your title.' He showed me little methods of proving to yourself whether the line belongs, and ways of finding out whether you were able to get more out of a line if you tried.

  Merle Haggard

  Song, Thinking, Littles

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• What comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.

  Bjork

  Editing, Circles, Singing

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• Characters last. Beautiful writing lasts. A compelling narrative lasts. Art survives long after ideas go extinct.

  Joel Achenbach

  Beautiful, Art, Writing

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• I've just really been into melody and lyrics and songwriting. Writing a rap, to me, is easy. I could write a rap like that. But writing songs and melodies and s**t that's hopefully going to stick around for 30, 40 years is f**king hard...If you have good songs and you're talented, people will eventually come to your shows, people will buy your music.

  Kid Rock

  Song, Kings, Rap

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• There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art.

  Laura Nyro

  Song, Art, Writing

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• There's enough songs for people to listen to, if they want to listen to songs. For every man, woman and child on earth, they could be sent, probaby, each of them, a hundred records, and never be repeated. There's enough songs. Unless someone's gonna come along with a pure heart and has something to say. That's a different story.

  Bob Dylan

  Song, Children, Writing

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• I had more verses . Owen Bradley said, 'Loretta, there's already been one El Paso and we'll never have another one. Get in that room and start taking some of those verses off.' Yeah, I took six verses off.

  Loretta Lynn

  Rooms, Six, Said

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• I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don't like it. There's no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist. I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, "Yeah, that's it." They appear before me and they fit. I don't usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don't know it. Sometimes,you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you're doing.

  John Prine

  Song, Writing, Typewriters

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• I could never be a country person, sitting around trees trying to write a song. I would rather be in the middle of society, whether it's growing or crumbling.

  Ric Ocasek

  Country, Song, Writing

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• The Bee Gees were always heavily influenced by black music. As a songwriter, it's never been difficult to pick up on the changing styles of music out there, and soul has always been my favourite genre.

  Robin Gibb

  Soul, Black, Style

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• All the songs that were written for that album are just all our first sophomore songs. So they're all from real life. Very sweet and very innocent.

  Ann Wilson

  Song, Sweet, Real

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• I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that-stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders...I think domesticity certainly doesn't make it easy to write, you know, because you've got a lot of distractions and I think a writer is always looking for distractions.

  Chrissie Hynde

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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