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

  Brian Setzer

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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'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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• 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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• 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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• Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music...I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing.

  Carly Simon

  Song, Writing, My Boyfriend

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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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• 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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• What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh...Songwriting is best. It's the hardest-finest-tightest. It also requires the most discipline.

  Pete Townshend

  Father, Character, Discipline

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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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• I can't draw. But I can draw with sound. That's the most useful thing I learned in terms of what my craft is... The arrangements were mine. They were little lines and stuff that I had written myself... And I was locked into this idea that vocals didn't count, melodies didn't count, songwriting craftsmanship didn't count. The only thing that counted was high arching guitar solos...

  Linda Ronstadt

  Guitar, Ideas, Sound

  "Ronstadt Proves She Can Go `Home' Again / New album returns singer to her roots". Interview with Joel Selvin, www.sfgate.com. March 19, 1995.

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• You don't think it was because a white man wrote it, a black man wrote it, a green man wrote it. What-doesn't make a difference!

  Cab Calloway

  Men, Thinking, White Man

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• I'm a songwriter first...In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious...Sensitive, humbug. Everybody thinks I'm sensitive...There is a downside to having one of the biggest-selling albums ever.

  Carole King

  Thinking, Careers, Albums

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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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• 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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• 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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