Quotes & Sayings About Lyricists

I speak from the heart. Certain people follow lyricists and people that put words on a dictionary together, and this and that. I'm more of a rapper that speaks how I feel. I just tell it how it is. — French Montana

[Jeffrey Lewis is] The best lyricist working in the US today. — Jarvis Cocker

I would like to see more new productions of new material by new composers/lyricists/book writers. I would like to see people take more chances. I think because everything costs so much they're not taking the chances they used to. — Harold Prince

Lyricists play with words. — Paul McCartney

I rate Morrissey (Steven Patrick Morrissey) as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry. — David Bowie

Everyone eventually winds up writing about themselves - the problem is finding the best way to go about it. To write about oneself literally, in the first person, presumes a more interesting personal life and philosophy than most rock lyricists possess. John Lennon was good for one great album based on musical direct address, 'Plastic Ono Band. — Jon Landau

If one wants to go on living, one must evolve. Before, when we composed, we would start by a series of music themes. Once created, we would hire writers and lyricists to make up the text and the story line. I was the first to do this backwards with 'Man of La Mancha.' — Mitch Leigh

Many lyricists rhyme as they pronounce, and their pronunciation is simply horrible. They can make "home" rhyme with "alone," and "saw" with "more," and go right off and look their innocent children in the eye without a touch of shame. — P.G. Wodehouse

Composers and lyricists are making songs that are approved by the producers and directors. — Shaan

Although I was able to study music with teachers, I never studied lyric writing. I read poetry, and I read other lyricists. But they were never writing in the style or the form that I was interested in. — Paul Simon

I'm certainly not a lyricist first. I prefer doing it intuitively and not really thinking about it so much. — Daniel Rossen

Composers and lyricists are not responsible for storyline and casting. One can imagine actors shouldering this responsibility, since they charge for half the film. But producers never ask actors to share the losses. Instead, they train their guns on composers and lyricists. — Shaan

Especially on Broadway, composers and lyricists fretted over their creations, obsessed over every rhyme, every critical chord or interval. The stakes were so high. On Broadway, people were watching and judging, especially newspaper critics who knew a thousand ways to slice and dice a songwriter for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands of faithful readers. There was no anonymity for the Broadway songwriter. Even the best could find themselves stripped naked the morning after by the tastemakers and their readers. — Michael Kosser

Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do. — Stephen Sondheim

He wondered again at the easy, graceful manner in which the Roman lyricists accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced were a tribute to the richness of the years they had enjoyed; and he marveled at the bitterness, the terror, the barely concealed hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition when they looked to that death which promised, however vaguely, a rich and ecstatic eternity of life, as if that death and promise were a mockery that soured the days of their living. — John Edward Williams

Usually when I write lyrics I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of other stuff. Some of my favourite lyricists are like Lou Reed, kind of the classics - Bob Dylan and stuff like that. — Andrew VanWyngarden

When it comes to writers and poets, for me it's Vinicius de Moraes. He's one of the greatest lyricists ever. — Ben Harper