Songwriting Quotes - Page 24

• I see songwriting as having to do with experience, and the more you've experienced, the better it is. But it has to be tempered, and you just must let your imagination run.

  Mick Jagger

  Running, Imagination

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• Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

  Voltaire

  Stupid, Book, Humorous

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

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• When I was 15, all I knew was that I had to be somebody and that I could be somebody. So I exploited the only thing I knew, which was singing and songwriting.

  Juan Gabriel

  Singing

  Source: articles.latimes.com

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• Even when I stop performing or stop making records I won't stop being creative. Songwriting is a good outlet.

  Billy Joel

  Creative, Records, Outlets

  "Q&A WITH BILLY JOEL : 'They See Me as One of Them' : Washed Up? Not to Fans of the Singer's New Album and World Tour". Interview with Dennis Hunt, articles.latimes.com. December 11, 1993.

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• Canadian Railroad Trilogy is an extremely fine piece of songwriting.

  Johnny Cash

  Railroads, Pieces, Trilogies

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• My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury.

  Brandi Carlile

  Rocks, Glam Rock, Two

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• What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That's why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it.

  Barry Manilow

  Opportunity, Missing, Sound

  "Barry Manilow On Singing Standards And His Real Job". "Morning Edition" with David Greene, www.npr.org. December 7, 2012.

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• Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.

  Jakob Dylan

  Thinking, Wind, People

  "Women and Country: A Conversation with Jakob Dylan and More". Interview with Mike Ragogna, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 28, 2010.

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• One good thing about music, when it hits-you feel no pain. ... My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die. ... Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. ... My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever.

  Bob Marley

  Pain, Fighting, Forever

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• With a song, it only takes a couple of minutes to go back to the beginning and try it again to see if it works. The novel freaks me out because, what if you get into the eighth chapter and think, 'Let's go to the top and see if this works again? It's going to take me three weeks.' I'm in awe of that.

  Ben Folds

  Song, Couple, Writing

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• There's a lot of craft in songwriting. The divine inspiration is when the idea comes. It may be a riff. It may be a word. It may be a phrase. It may be a title. Sometimes, in the best of both worlds, that divine inspiration extends through the whole song. I've literally sat down and written a song from beginning to end, almost complete lyrics and everything without ever stopping...in two minutes. The chorus of 'She's Gone' was like that.

  John Oates

  Song, Inspiration, Writing

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• All the characters on the album are inside me, though none are me. They are sides of me or who I was.

  David Berman

  Writing, Character, Albums

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• Well, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.

  Bob Marley

  Song, Inspiration, Mean

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• The less I talk in bars, write emails, express myself in an emotionally lewd way outside of my songwriting, the more I have to do it through my music.

  Ben Folds

  Writing, Email, Bars

  Source: www.billboard.com

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• I like the songwriting. I don't ever listen and then go back and change stuff. For me when I wrote the song, it's always really fun and exciting.

  Christopher Owens

  Song, Fun, Stuff

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

  PJ Harvey

  Writing, Issues, Matter

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I went to visit a friend of mine, a writer name Troy Seal, a songwriting fool. He's had a ton of hits. He said, "I've got a thing I'm stuck on." I can hear the wind a blowin' - he already had that. You and me lord, we had it all. He only had that first verse. For some reason he was stuck. But that's how that came about.

  Donnie Fritts

  Wind, Names, Fool

  "The Soulful DNA of Country Songwriter Donnie Fritts". Interview with Jacob Blickenstaff, www.motherjones.com. October 08, 2015.

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• With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive.

  Carrie Brownstein

  Together, Form, Process

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• Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.

  Win Butler

  Song, Inspiration, Half

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I think the zenith of popular songwriting to the United States of America was that period that started in the '20s and went into the '50s. It was the period of the great American standard song.

  Linda Ronstadt

  Song, Thinking, America

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Songwriting is my main thing. I know that I'll do that for the rest of my life.

  Emeli Sande

  Knows

  Source: www.pbs.org

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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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• Melody is the first thing that comes to me when I'm songwriting. I learned piano classically first, and then I went into soul, and so melody has always been the first. It's so important.

  Emeli Sande

  Piano, Soul, Important

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

  Steve Earle

  Country, Running, Song

  "The Revolution Starts Now". Interview with Jeff Fleischer, www.motherjones.com. October 14, 2004.

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• I don't write poetry for the page because my inclination in that area is satisfied by songwriting. "Ornamental Hermit" was a comparatively effortless song to write, which is rare for me.

  David Grubbs

  Song, Writing, Pages

  Interview with Nick Hallett, logger.believermag.com. May 16, 2013.

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