Songwriting Quotes

“When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time.”

“I am an open book through the songwriting.”

“Experience is definitely the high road once driven. It actually enhances the songwriting and song sourcing process.”

“The songwriting process is different on every record because you're never coming from the same place when you're writing.”

“What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.”

“I sat in on some songwriting classes, and it was really bloody hard, a lot of music theory. I'd be sitting there, and they'd be talking all this music theory, and the teacher would say, 'Let's ask our guest Jimmy what he thinks,' and I'd be sitting there thinking, 'Please don't ask me, please don't ask me.'”

“A steampunk nationBaby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'causeOur art's official and only partially artificialAnd our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal butThere's not where it settlesBecause it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettleAnd now we face it, this creation we made toTo save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it'sOur safeway they make into a pathetic revelationIn our steampunk nationOur steampunk nation”

“That's what I love about songwriting. It's why I've been obsessed with Joni Mitchell forever. You can place yourself right in the moment that she's in, and it makes you feel very close to her as an artist. Feeling like you know someone through their writing strengthens your relationship to all their future music, in my experience.”

“Because of my interest in songwriting, I was invited to visit a friend in L.A. for songwriting sessions with him and his friends. We wrote six songs by the end of the weekend, and 'Hide Away' happened to be one of them!”

“The 'Black Album' was my real first introduction to Metallica. I was, like, 12 or 13 at the time. We were just getting into music, and I liked that album a lot, but it didn't necessarily change my life. But when I started picking up all the other Metallica records, 'Master of Puppets' was the one to me that stuck out with its songwriting.”

“Songwriting has become such a big part of what I do that emotions and the melodies that accompany them blur into one.”

“I thought my singing and songwriting were good, but nothing different. Then you're presented with this picture image that contradicts the impression you get from listening to the record.”

“My voice is very country, and my songwriting is very country.”

“I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.”

“At first it was my brother's songwriting and I was just doing what everyone told me.”

“Songwriting is such a personal thing and it's hard to be in a room with somebody you don't know and trust.”

“I'm from a little island off of Massachusetts, Nantucket. It's hard getting into the music business from there, but my parents took me to songwriting festivals because I would write and produce my own music.”

“To me, songwriting is exaggerating to an extent.”

“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.”

“I stand firm behind the belief that, for me, songwriting isn't something that I do or command, it happens to me. I can either choose to stop and acknowledge it, or put it off and hope that it won't fade away. 'That Wasn't Me' is no exception - it came together more quickly than any other song I have ever constructed on my own.”