Songwriting Quotes - Page 23

• I get told I'm a confessional songwriter, which gets on my tits because I think of negative connotations attached to the word "confessional". I don't like the idea of songwriting being therapy. I don't want to put myself so directly in the foreground.

  Beth Orton

  Thinking, Ideas, Negative

  Interview with Hector de la Manzana, believermag.com. March 2003.

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• I could speak Spanish fluently growing up, but I'm so out of practice, and I have such a tremendous respect for songwriting in the Spanish language.

  Miguel

  Growing Up, Practice, Language

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• I'm getting bored performing the same songs over and over. Songwriting comes and goes.

  Sharon Van Etten

  Song, Bored, Performing

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• Country music turns the stuff we say every day into a soundtrack...taking an ordinary working man like me into that rough, happy country of longnecks and short tales.

  Jay Heinrichs

  Country, Writing, Men

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• To me songwriting is more like redemption. I can extract the poison or the pollen, the essence from a situation and the rest becomes a husk that blows away.

  Beth Orton

  Blow, Essence, Poison

  Interview with Hector de la Manzana, believermag.com. March 1, 2003.

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• I couldn't say there is a formula to songwriting. Each time is a unique experience.

  Greg Lake

  Unique, Unique Experiences, Formulas

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• Songwriting is never one thing. I've spent as long as three months writing a song. Other times I've done it in twenty minutes.

  Greg Lake

  Song, Writing, Long

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• I'm not inspired by songwriting at all; that took place years ago. I'm pretty well established, as far as my influences go. I don't listen to music anymore. It all sounds the same to me.

  Mose Allison

  Years, Sound, Inspired

  Interview with Jason Heller, music.avclub.com. April 02, 2010.

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• I attended a post-college program in L.A. for Music Business and Production. Took several courses involving Music Production, Arrangement, and Songwriting.

  Adam Kluger

  College, Program, Music Business

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• If you are in NYC and you only do one thing culturally go and see Carol Lipnik at Pangea. If you love music and appreciate great songwriting and singing, if you came to NYC to experience magical happenings in tiny rooms that could never happen anyplace else in the world, if you dreamed of intimate nights surrounded by smart, talented, interesting people, this is what you're here for.
  Now DON'T MISS IT!!!!

  Justin Vivian Bond

  Smart, Night, Nyc

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• The songwriting style, to me, is superior. There was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I'm attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity.

  M. Ward

  Song, Opportunity, Light

  Interview with Bob Boilen, www.npr.org. November 17, 2006.

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• People talk about songwriting or comedy as creative expression, but life is creative expression. Table-making, even nursing, is extraordinarily creative.

  John Darnielle

  Nursing, Expression, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I've always loved songwriting, and I vowed to be a songwriter like Cole Porter when I was only 9 years old.

  Mel Brooks

  Years, Songwriters

  Billboard Interview, www.billboard.com. December 8, 2005.

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• One thing that I'm really interested in is the kind of esoteric detail that surrounds these great figures. And Wikipedia is full of that kind of stuff, whether it's true or untrue. It staggers me: why, in the short space assigned to a person or an event, that kind of random information is there. To be honest, that's wonderful fuel for songwriting.

  Nick Cave

  Space, Wikipedia, Events

  "Nick Cave on the Evolution of His Music". Interview with Simon Abrams, www.esquire.com. January 28, 2014.

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• I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.

  Ezra Furman

  Thinking, Phrases, Really Great

  "Playground for the Perplexed". Interview with J.L. Sirisuk, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 5, 2015.

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• In Nashville, there is a historic tendency to work the lyric to death while settling for music that works. In pop or rock, it can be the other way around.

  Michael Kosser

  Writing, Rocks, Nashville

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• [Non-performing songwriters] climb the mountain the first time, take their successes in stride, and when they tumble down the mountain, they just consider the tumble part of their profession and don't even waste time mourning their slump. They continue to write, make new connections, and move forward toward a new round of success.

  Michael Kosser

  Moving, Writing, Mourning

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• Songwriting is a craft. Writing good songs on a a consistent basis doesn not happen spontaneously. In fact, most of our best songwriters learned to write good songs by writing a lot of not so good ones. Education matters in songwriting, just as it matters for physicists, chemists, doctors, lawyers and MBAs. Education lays the foundataion on which to build experience.

  Michael Kosser

  Song, Writing, Doctors

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• Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public.

  Michael Kosser

  Song, Writing, Advice

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• Songwriting is not particularly easy for me. I think it would be easy for me if I didn't have such high restrictions and feelings about what I want my music to be. I'm not precious at all when it comes to producing music and I can bring that to an artist and let them expand their horizons.

  John Congleton

  Artist, Thinking, Feelings

  "John Congleton: Meet Indie Rock's Unsung Hero Of 2011". Interview with Mike Katzif, www.npr.org. December 23, 2011.

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• I feel like songwriting changed from something that I liked doing to something that, I feel, is a very important outlet for me to digest all the things around me. Once I put thoughts into a song, I can let it go, it doesn't bug me anymore you know what I mean? It's kind of a catharsis.

  Dan Mangan

  Song, Mean, Important

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• What I strive to do with songwriting is be really honest, authentic and try to be open and share that with people. I choose that over trying to be clever, poetic, or lyrical.

  Brett Dennen

  Clever, People, Trying

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• I've always written songs to use music as a form of therapy or as a way to look at my obstacles or my memories from a different perspective. It's always helped me realize the grass isn't always greener and how I need to live more in the moment. My songwriting is a documentation of whatever's happening in my life at that point in time.

  Chuck Ragan

  Song, Memories, Perspective

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• That's really where my heart is, unfortunately - I'm less interested in songwriting and more into just making noise.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Heart, Noise, My Heart

  Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. January 31, 2011.

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• I'm from the generation that's always been recording, from the very beginning. I learned to play the guitar on the four-track. I started listening to music at a time when people were doing recording at home, when the discussion about songwriting correlated to the discussion about producing and engineering. I think that's a description of my generation.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Home, Thinking, Guitar

  Interview with Jason Crock, pitchfork.com. May 15, 2006.

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