Songwriting Quotes - Page 7

• If you don't want anyone to know anything about you, don't write anything.

  Pete Townshend

  Writing, Want, Knows

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• In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.

  Robert Schumann

  Funny, Music, Writing

  "Dictionary of Humorous Quotations" edited by Evan Esar, (p. 156), 1949.

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• The fact is that all the recording science and technology in the world is no substitute for a good song or for real feeling. Music is about feeling and if there isn't any genuine feeling, if the song isn't about anything that anyone gives a damn about, there's nothing you can do. All the technique that exists won't make it any good; it'll just make it technological. All the production values you add won't do anything except make it glossy.

  David Crosby

  Song, Real, Writing

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• A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really.

  Lenny Kravitz

  People, Writing Songs, Songwriters

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• Sometimes the most exciting journey you can make is through your own imagination.

  Sir David Baird, 1st Baronet

  Writing, Journey, Imagination

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• Most things I worry about never happen anyway.

  Tom Petty

  Worry, Happens, Petty

  Song: Crawling Back To You, Album: Wildflowers, 1994

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• Just remember that William Blake wasn't even published in his lifetime. Ya gotta keep creating.

  Kris Kristofferson

  Creating, Remember, Lifetime

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• For me, in songwriting, I have a route I can take. Maybe there's some forks, I can go this way, this way. But I know those roads. I still have the experience behind me.

  Dave Matthews

  Way, Forks, Behinds

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• What we try to do with all of our albums, is live out our musical fantasies in the most honest fashion we know how...We want to include songs that lyrically cover subjects ranging from the heaviest things we've ever done to light-hearted experiences that can best be presented through sentimental bluesy ballads that are usually good for a chuckle or two.

  Michael Hutchence

  Fashion, Song, Light

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• We would turn everything into songs in those days...A lot of people think "Alice's Restaurant" was an anti-war song. It's not.

  Arlo Guthrie

  Song, War, Thinking

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• We worked the medley on side two of "Abbey Road" out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India a year before. So there was just a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine.

  George Harrison

  Music, Song, Years

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• I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.

  Leonard Cohen

  Song, Writing, People

  Leonard Cohen (2014). “Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen”, p.346, Omnibus Press

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• My songs emerge unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own...We have, all of us, over the years, written things that responded to the world as it slapped us in the face. Me and Nash, singing "To the Last Whale" and "Find the Cost of Freedom". Stills coming up with "For What It's Worth". These came right out of the news. People have accused us of taking stances and the truth is we don't.

  David Crosby

  Song, Years, Whales

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• I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head...that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft... it's second nature.

  Janis Ian

  Real, Writing, Talking

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• As far as my creative urge is concerned, I do sit down and write my own music...I'll tell you a writer who I think is a genius: Ray Stevens. He comes up with some of the most fantastic novelty ideas. Dolly Parton also writes well. I like a lot of songs, a lot of writers.

  Boudleaux Bryant

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter.

  Melissa Manchester

  Song, Writing, Nashville

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• The songwriting has never really stepped forward from the '50's.

  Brian Setzer

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• I didn't want to be the crippled songwriter or the crippled singer. I wanted to be the singer or the songwriter who was crippled. I wanted to be larger than life and a man among men.

  Doc Pomus

  Men, Singers, Larger Than Life

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• If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.

  Duke Ellington

  Music, Jazz, Epitome

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• Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory.

  Neil Diamond

  Nice, Different, Would Be

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• It would be nice to abandon the verse-chorus-bridge structure completely, and make it so none of these things are definable...Make up new names for them. Instead of a bridge, you can call it a highway, or an overpass...Music should never be harmless.

  Robbie Robertson

  Nice, Bridges, Names

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• You're dealing in magic-it's this intangible thing that has to happen. And to seek it out too much might not be a good idea. Because, you know, it's very shy, too. But once you've got the essence of them, you can work songs and improve them. You see if there's a better word, or a better change.

  Tom Petty

  Song, Essence, Ideas

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• It just seems like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it's so sad that there are so many musicians who don't want to change the world.

  Moby

  Change, Thinking, Musician

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• First thing, I throw on some jeans, a T-shirt and my Keds sneakers and make coffee. That is actually my favorite time of day. That is when I do my songwriting, when I am in writing mode.

  Lucinda Williams

  Coffee, Writing, Jeans

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• I don't have the same restrictions that other people do because I never painted myself into a corner. I've always done things that didn't necessarily fit the form. I've never felt limited in that respect in terms of songwriting.

  Todd Rundgren

  People, Done, Fit

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