Quotes & Sayings About Lyrics

I stay true to my lyrics. If I go back and look at them in hindsight, the emotions I had when I wrote them have passed. It feels unjustified to change them. — Paloma Faith

My mother wrote lyrics and sang but was overtaken by life with four children and worked. — Joy Harjo

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours — Bob Dylan

A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song. — John Mellencamp

There were times in my career I went a little further than I wanted because of expectations. Doing certain things onstage when children were in the audience, wearing certain clothes, singing certain lyrics. — Cheryl James

And my head told my heart
"Let love grow"
But my heart told my head
"This time no
This time no — Mumford & Sons

The fact that our message and my lyrics can have a positive impact on someone's life is really astounding. It definitely makes me appreciate what I do even more because I'm not just doing it for self-gain, I'm doing it to help others. — Beau Bokan

I think I took a few stabs at writing socially conscious lyrics. I had never intended to write a song about the Gulf War, but when I wrote "Before You Hit The Floor," I didn't know what the hell was going on in the world. — Bucky Pope

'Built This Pool' was an idea that I had for a song starting several years ago, and as we were in between takes of recording something, I was actually holding a guitar at the time, and I played this silly thing, and sang the lyrics to 'Built This Pool' kinda in the background. — Mark Hoppus

You see, there's some blues for folks ain't never had a thing, and that's a sad blues ... but the saddest kind of blues is for them that's had everything they ever wanted and has lost it, and knows it won't come back no more. Ain't no sufferin' in this world worse than that; and that's the blue we call 'I Had It But It's All Gone Now. — Ken Grimwood

One Life, with each other, Sisters, Brothers... — Bono

We recorded Star Climbing over a three-year period between our studios, working on songs and lyrics until we felt like we had found the albums direction. It is our most distinctive album to date, combining all our different tastes and styles into one. — Stuart Price

Singing the songs, writing the lyrics, emotioning the words; that is all I can do for love. — M.F. Moonzajer

You're like the lyrics to my favorite song. You stick with me all day long. And when I reach the end I wanna hear it again. — TobyMac

And givin' yourself to me can never be wrong — Marvin Gaye

If he can't sleep, how will he ever dream? — Eddie Vedder

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion. — T.F. Hodge

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important. — Brian Eno

He was telling me then that lyrics have truth
behind them, because they come from somewhere
inside the person who wrote them. I look back
down at the page. — Colleen Hoover

Every time I look down on this timeless town
Whether blue or gray be her skies.
Whether loud be her cheers or soft be her tears,
More and more do I realize:
I love Paris in the springtime.
I love Paris in the fall.
I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles,
I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles.
I love Paris every moment,
Every moment of the year.
I love Paris, why, oh why do I love Paris?
Because my love is near. — Cole Porter

I'm not really into the whole lyrics thing; I just like to make music that people like to listen to. — Fetty Wap

A foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside
and domestically approved romantic fancy
is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing
it will only be parlayed into a memory — Tom Waits

It's odd to spend your vacation with someone else's music especially when you're alone. You're free to let loose, unobserved, but someone else has chosen the words you belt out in private, the rythms you can dance to like a fool. — Julia Glass

You'll also need to invest in yourself with the kind of promo that targets your specific audience to help build that word of mouth. Most importantly, believe in what you're doing and in your music and lyrics. — Eliot Lewis

I will never let you fall
I'll stand up with you forever
I'll be there for you through it all
Even if saving you sends me to heaven — Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Your pain is your own until you put it to music, then it belongs to everyone. You'll find it lightens the load. — Beau North

Lyrics belongs to us ina specific language, but music is universal. — Abrar Ahmed Chowdhury

I wish Howard Ashman was still alive so I could just meet him and tell him his words are magic. It's so fun to say. He has such great alliteration and paints the most vivid images with his lyrics — Tituss Burgess

If it's the beginning of something - like an album, I'm working on the lyrics and I take a walkman and headset. — Phil Collins

She's like poetry. Like prose and love letters and lyrics, cascading down the center of a page. — Colleen Hoover

I just kept it real and had the freedom to do what I want. It's not designed for any age group. It's not made for radio. There are no edits. The whole album contains explicit lyrics but that's because you need it. — Vanilla Ice

A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really. — Lenny Kravitz

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike. — Maya Angelou

I love artists who have spirituality. Jonathan Coulton is the man, I love his melodies and lyrics. Chap-hop is the bomb! — MC Lars

Seven deadly sins,
seven ways to win,
seven holy paths to hell,
and your trip begins
Seven downward slopes
seven bloodied hopes
seven are your burning fires,
seven your desires ... — Iron Maiden

You wrote my thoughts
For all the world to see
Painted the sky
With immortal words — Marie Symeou

I let the beast in too soon I don't know how to live without his hand on my throat. I fight him always and still. Oh, darling it's so sweet. You think you know how crazy, how crazy I am. — Fiona Apple

I didn't want the lyrics to be about specific things in my life, I wanted them to be about generalised experiences I'd had. So when I'm writing about relationships or somebody leaving you or something, a lot of lyrics are partly about failed relationships I'd had, but they were also about my Dad, and being abandoned as a kid. — Zachary Cole Smith

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
this brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here its like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself
if I could just come in I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
from the house that built me. — Miranda Lambert

It's interesting to have a conglomeration of people that covers the strata from A to Z ... There's a certain element of the audience that's intellectually oriented, into the lyrics ... then there's another element of the audience that's into a sex trip. I'm into both of them. — Lou Reed

The lyrics, the strings, the chords, everything comes at the moment like a gift that is put right into your head and that's how I hear it. — Michael Jackson

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people. — John Lennon

I'm sorry I don't understand where all of these is coming from
I thought that we were fine
-Just Give Me A Reason — Nate Ruess

There's a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I've got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it ... so I don't write a million songs. — Christine McVie

When the sweet talkin's done, a man is a two face, a worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing the blues in the night. — Johnny Mercer

Technology offers the illusion of companionship without the demands of intimacy, and communication without emotional risk, while actually making people feel lonelier and more overwhelmed.

"A song that became popular on YouTube in 2010, 'Do You Want to Date My Avatar?' ends with the lyrics 'And if you think I'm not the one, log off, log off, and we'll be done.' "

from a review of Alone Together by S. Turkle — Michiko Kakutani

Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art. — Stephen Sondheim

The things I see every day inspire my sound and lyrics, like certain people and situations that stick out in my mind. There are also certain musicians I love whose music and styles inspire me. — Birdy

A lot of the time there is a lot of melancholy in the lyrics. — Will Champion

Normally when I'm writing, in the beginning I don't think of lyrics at all. I'm just improvising. — St. Lucia

Pray to your God, open your heart.
Whatever you do, don't be afraid of the dark. — Jared Leto

In Van Halen there were moments, like in some of the ballads, I put my heart and soul into those records. Those lyrics when I sang 'em, I gave myself goosebumps. — Sammy Hagar

I'd like to do a song that I wrote today about our government's increasing infringement on our right to privacy, but the lyrics mysteriously disappeared from my guitar case. — Dan Piraro

I think every generation has that movement of hip-hop that you know you're playing it and you definitely have that moment of like, "Why am I saying this so enthusiastically? Why am I so stoked and psyched to say these lyrics?" — Solange Knowles

The music, I think, is just as important as the lyrics; it portrays the emotion of the song. I play the kind of music that I want to listen to. — Courtney Barnett

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing. — Jeff Tweedy

I'm not afraid to go out on a limb, style-wise or with lyrics. I don't ever want to be afraid to cut those types of songs because radio might not play it. — Lee Ann Womack

Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don't just brainstorm; praystorm. — Mark Batterson

No one can yet tell me why I am able to forget what I wrote in articles and reviews that I once felt passionate about, and yet am able to recall the entire lyrics of Some Enchanted Evening — Joseph Epstein

To go on the road and see people sing my own lyrics back to me is just fantastic. — Dave Gahan

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me. — Van Morrison

When I sew you up ...
Don't let me,
Stop bleeding,
Tiny stitches that you placed into my skin,
Won't let me go,
And they're ruining the mood. — Pierce The Veil

These so-called entertainers get rich while the kids who emulate their lyrics and attitude destroy themselves. — Bill O'Reilly

For the record, I am not an admitted homosexual, nor am I a homosexual, though I do know the lyrics to every show tune ever written, which might perhaps account for the confusion. — John Podhoretz

A good rock band is like a great lover. Their rhythms simultaneously jolt and calm you. They know when and where to tease you to make it feel the best, how to draw from you the ultimate pleasure. — Tom Leveen

This is business: they don't care about your lyrics;
The better you sell, the better future for their children.
Controversy sells, so they support conflict,
Makes more progress, means more profit.
An artist gets killed, they say they're 'so sorry,'
Meanwhile, they tell you the date of his next project.
What a life ... death made them more profit:
Record companies get paid for your drama. — Cormega

I got the Eye of the Tiger
The Fire
Dancing through the fire
Cause I am a Champion!
And your gonna hear me Roar
-Roar — Katy Perry

I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn't have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn't important it would just be a poem. — Julian Cope

Although I have guitars all around and I pick themm up occasionally and write a tune and make a record, I don't really see myself as a musician. It may seem a funny thing to say. It's just like, I write lyrics amd I make up songs, but I'm not a great lyricist or songwriter or producer. It's when you put all these things together - that makes me. — George Harrison

If we're all saying that rap is an art form then we gotta be more responsible for our lyrics. If you see everybody dying because of what you're saying, it don't matter that you didn't make them die, it just matters that you didn't save them. — Tupac Shakur

Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case "Big Shot" and "Bette Davis Eyes." The lyrics of the two songs provided no commentary, honest or ironic, on the proceedings. They were merely there and always underfoot, the insistent gray muck that was pop culture. It stuck to our shoes and we tracked it through our lives. — Colson Whitehead

How can you consider flower power outdated? The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated? — Robert Plant

I get tips from Bob Gaudio. And one of my songs somehow caught the attention of one of my idols, Marty Panzer, who wrote big hits for Barry Manilow. So two guys who inspired me to write lyrics are now teaching me to write. — Erich Bergen

You are more than the choices that you've made,
You are more than the sum of your past mistakes,
You are more than the problems you create,
You've been remade. — Tenth Avenue North

It was a period when they used to read into our lyrics a lot, used to think there was more in them than there was. — Paul McCartney

Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead. — Matt Berninger

That's something - you laugh about Eminem ... It's funny, man, because I didn't like him when he first came out, ya know. It seemed like a big joke. But I think the guy's for real, and I like his lyrics! — Alan Vega

I love lyrics. They help me to figure things out. — Colleen Saidman

Why don't you find out for yourself?
Then you'll see the glass, hidden in the grass. — Morrissey

Among the responsibilities of any writer is that, no matter what else, they know what they mean. So, even if no one else knows what you're talking about, you do. The listener can sense that, even if they don't get the literal meaning. The faith that they place in the clues and the connections and the secrets of the lyrics is of the utmost importance. — Joanna Newsom

In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on. — Mandy Patinkin

There is a great temptation with songs, melodies and lyrics to overcomplicate them but in fact, you find that the most enduring melodies are often the simplest. — Ken Hensley

Better take the keys and drive forever. Staying won't put these futures back together. All the perfect drugs and superheroes wouldn't be enough to bring me back to zero. — Aimee Mann

Folk music usually has an emphasis on the lyrics and melody. And those lyrics are usually relevant in some way. And it's populist in scope, which is also true of Bad Religion. So it's more meant to draw some parallels between the two. And I think even my voice and my delivery can be thought of as a little bit folky. — Greg Graffin

some things cost more than you realize — Radiohead

My problem was that I felt ashamed of feeling sad or angry. Now, I don't hide my vulnerability in my lyrics. There's no way I was going to get raped and not get something out of it. I learned about power and hope and forgiveness. I like who I am now and I wouldn't be who I am if that hadn't happened. — Fiona Apple

People say, "You should write lyrics" and I say I'm quite happy not to, because I like being part of that process where you write your version of what someone else's lyrics are saying to you, and that enjoyment has never changed. — Elton John

It starts off like climbing a tree or solving a puzzle - poetry, if nothing else, is just fun to write. But deeper into each and every piece, you no longer hesitate to call it work. It's passion. A poet's sense of lyrical accomplishment is then his food and water, his means of survival. — Criss Jami

Lost in a daydream. — Jared Leto

Most people think its sex, money, and drugs but Hip-Hop is about lyrics, storytelling, and everybody having a different style. That's just another idea of beautiful, being yourself and creating music that represents you and what you like. — Rapsody

Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten. — Quincy Jones

I bet all I had on a thing called love; guess in the end it wasn't enough. And it's hard to watch you leave right now; I'm gonna have to learn to let you go somehow. — Carrie Underwood

If I'd believed that stuff was true, I would have missed out on loving you. — Janette Rallison

I don't think my lyrics go so well when I try to sound poetic. Some people do that really well. If I did that I'd feel like it wouldn't be genuine. — Chaz Bundick

Obviously, the music and lyrics are in me, but if I let myself get in my own way, I do. I empty out and let it come, and then the music spirits take over. — Joan Jett

They live, we sleep, we starve, they eat. You must comply with their deceit, don't trust the wolves to guard the sheep. They'll colonize when you close your eyes into a superpower that will never die. — Trevor D. Richardson

What are words without the melody? — Shannon L. Alder

No use wishing now for any other sin. — Elvis Costello

I cant hide what i feel inside adn jsut stop loving you even if i watned to i cant hold on but letting go is somethin i cant do even if i wanted to — Jason Aldean

It was so much fun conducting an orchestra and watching the musicians' faces as some of Kanye's lyrics went by. They couldn't believe what was going on. — Jon Brion