Song Writer Quotes & Sayings

I just feel like it's easier to co-write sometimes, especially if you have chemistry with somebody. It kind of takes all the pressure off of you. But, you know, I started writing songs by myself. I didn't really have a co-writer, besides my dad. When I see a record and it has a song on it that someone wrote [alone], I just really believe in them as a writer. I feel like it's a window into them, more than it is if you write a song with someone else. — Miranda Lambert

Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen ot exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, "discourse communities" are often gated,so it's the good writer's job to offer readers a set of keys. — Roy Peter Clark

Sara Creasy is a new writer to watch, and Song of Scarabaeus is a novel to read and enjoy ... The biological speculation rings with truth and possibility, the terraforming-gone-wrong creates an environment of delicious creepiness, and Creasy's imaginatively-constructed universe draws the reader in, to follow Edie and Finn's quest for freedom. — Vonda N. McIntyre

What happened during the previews of Taboo [ musical] was that it was the first time I'd ever been written about as a great song-writer - I cried. I absolutely wept, because it wasn't the usual stuff like, "Oh, he was a drug addict and he did this and that ... " It was really looking at the music and it was really complimentary. It was a huge thing. — Boy George

You have to be a really talented writer if you're trying to encapsulate a news story with a song and have it live after the event. I don't have the focus to do that, really. — Babatunde Adebimpe

What's interesting about songs where the writer is genuinely in love with words is that it's easy to read the lyrics like a poem. — Ann Reed

I just write all the time. In my whole life I've never had what I've heard people talk about writer's block. I've never had that. Life is like a song to me. I just hear everything in music, so I have never once thought "Well, I'm never gonna be able to write again." I've got thousands of songs. — Dolly Parton

I write a lot and I will have some originals on the record. I think it is a mistake for an artist like me to think I am a better writer than Cole Porter. I think it is important to realize what my strengths are. I do like to write and I'm not shabby but I don't think I'm the most brilliant writer. I think it would be a shame and sort so egotistical to say I don't need these wonderful writers. These men created works of art and wrote hundreds of beautiful songs. It would be a mistake for me to say at this point in my career that I am so good. — Michael Buble

When I write I like to give equal justice to lyrics, too. I want the song to have meaning for me so I can make it have meaning for the audience. — Oliver

I think Taylor Swift is a really good artist. I feel like her personality shines through everything she does, her music, her fashion, her style. She won Album of the Year, and she's a really good writer. I'm a song writer so I respect artists who write their own songs. She won Album of the Year when she was 18 or something like that so, I think she's dope. — Mike Posner

I'm sort of an 'automatic' writer. I'm not much for chiseling away at songs or working at them for days trying to make them perfect. If I can sit down and write something in five minutes, then that's great. And if that doesn't happen, then either it doesn't get finished or else it's usually not any good. — Leon Russell

As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself. — Richard Thompson

For the introvert, conversation can be a very limited forum for self-expression. When a song moves you, a writer "gets" you, or a theory enlightens you - you and its creator are connecting in a realm beyond sight or speech. — Laurie A. Helgoe

I'm not a perfect song writer, but I am song writing problems with dynamics, instrument change and arrangements. — Richard Patrick

We've all had that experience where we hear a song that we've liked for many years, and we finally hear what the writer tells us what it's about, and you're often disappointed. — Jakob Dylan

Be a great writer when you write your life's song. — Debasish Mridha

Lyrics are what I tend to tear hair out over and they're where I tend to feel weak musically, if I'm being very honest. It is not something I feel like I know anything about; I would not consider myself a writer. I just want to sing, I just want to sing a melody, I just want to feel a melody, and be part of the song, and everything else is not so important. — Zach Condon

The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer. — Keith Richards

If you have a painting in you, paint. If you have a song to sing, sing. Don't judge your creation. Just create it. Banish doubt and fear and step out of your own way if you have to. Write if you're a writer and invent if you're an inventor. Do what you were born to do. Only then will you know a remarkable life. — Toni Sorenson

When one individual writer sings her song of beauty, she changes the lives of a million others. — Richard Bach

Farewell, farewell," said the swallow, with a heavy heart, as he left the warm countries, to fly back into Denmark. There he had a nest over the window of a house in which dwelt the writer of fairy tales. The swallow sang "Tweet, tweet," and from his song came the whole story. — Hans Christian Andersen

I dabbled a little bit in the whole music thing but I've always thought about Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John's lyricist; Elton John is the great melody and song writer but Bernie Taupin is the one who writes all the lyrics. I don't write lyrics, and I never wanted to be in the music business if I was just going to be a puppet in it. — Carmen Ejogo

As a writer of worship songs, I have a hunger to write deep songs of passionate reverence to God. Yet I'm aware I cannot sing before I have seen. All worship is a response to a revelation
it's only as we breathe in more of the wonders of God that we can breathe out a fuller response to Him ... the key to a life of passionate and powerful worship comes from seeing God. — Matt Redman

Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer. — Henry Louis Gates

Even before I started writing songs, that was one of my goals to be a writer, and I still have that goal. I've just gotten sidetracked. — Jason Reeves

I could tell it was a popular move as a writer to walk down the bass lines while you were writing a song. — Gavin DeGraw

If you're a song writer, it's a bit different because you are expressing your own words, feelings, perspective. As an actor, you are doing your best to interpret and express the root of the character's perspective which have been established by the writer. There are parallels of performing. Tapping into your own emotional piggy bank. The biggest commonality is if you are successful in either industry, you get free snacks all the time. — Candice Accola

I long ago learned that you can't expect people to interpret the songs in the way they had meant for you, as the writer. — PJ Harvey

I feel like 'Next To Me' is a great introduction because it's a simple song that has a simple message for me. I wanted to introduce something that lyrically I'm proud of and introduces me both as an artist and as a writer. — Emeli Sande

Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public. — Michael Kosser

I think music is an intuitive force. It's this beautiful wave that connects all of us and inspires us, and I think music has the ability - when you listen to a song, you're not immediately thinking about the lyrics or what's going on in the mind of the writer, you're feeling the song. — Serj Tankian

All songs are already perfectly written. It is the writer's job to find it and get it on paper. — Beth Nielsen Chapman

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt. — Alberto Moravia

You know Nashville, there's people that are ten times more talented than me, ten times better singer than me, song writer than me, but for some reason you get the ball and now - and now you run with it. And you do the best you can. — Garth Brooks

I can play the guitar and the keys and the drums. I'm not brilliant at any of them. I can sing too. Some of my friends are proper musicians but I'm a song-writer. I write songs. — Jim Sturgess

I'm a song writer, professional dreamer... — Don Williams

I don't care if it's Bruno Mars or Aerosmith or ZZ Top ... it's about songs. 'Paperback Writer,' 'Satisfaction,' 'Cat Scratch Fever,' 'Walk This Way,' all the killer songs in the world start with an identifiable guitar pattern that is basically a bastardization of either honky-tonk or boogie-woogie. And that's in every cool piece of music in the world that you and I love. — Ted Nugent

His death took place on the same day, at the same time of the same month as Katie's: Monday 12th November at 4am in the morning, on her tenth year anniversary. The old radio suddenly came live and the song Immortality by Celine Dion played. Emma proved you can love the man and hate the disease. She was relieved Ronan's suffering had ended and that he had gone before her as he was so ill — Annette J. Dunlea

I was 16 when we made the first song. We've been touring for half a decade together and we've had quite a bit of time spent learning our craft. You improve as a song writer and as a musician over time. — Andy Biersack

Whenever I work with different artists, I expand as a song writer, as a producer, and I always want to try and find the bridge between my world and their world. — Steve Aoki

I started dealing with my emotional pain by writing. I always had been a writer, but just not songs. Saying things on paper that I would never, ever say, and saying things to myself, admitting things to myself, about myself and my personality, just putting it on paper, is how I deal with emotional pain. — India.Arie

I enjoy writing songs that could have been written before [my time]. When I feel like I'm tapping into a deep vein in the body of American music, it gives me strength as a writer, like I'm dipping my pen into a deep ink well. That's the folk music tradition. Like Pete Seeger said, 'Everyone's a link in the chain.' It's a strong chain, so rely on it ... I believe it takes all those great songs in the past to make your song even a little bit good. — Ketch Secor

As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too. — Richie Sambora

MAINTAINING DOCTRINAL PURITY IS good, but it is not the whole picture for a New Testament church. The apostles wanted to do much more than simply "hold the fort," as the old gospel song says. They asked God to empower them to move out and impact an entire culture. In too many places where the Bible is being thumped and doctrine is being argued until three in the morning, the Spirit of that doctrine is missing. William Law, an English devotional writer of the early 1700s, wrote, "Read whatever chapter of Scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him."1 — Jim Cymbala

I think people just want to hear good songs and I just want to keep getting better as a writer so that I can deliver good songs. — Corey Smith

See, I'm not the type of writer that has 400 songs in a suitcase someplace on the shelf. I'm sort of a rise-to-the-occasion-type of writer, so when I know I'm going to record, I get in the mood to write. — Luther Vandross

Everything is an echo of something I once read.

Dream, hope, and celebrate life!

Love always comes back in a song.

One thing we all have in common is a love for food and drink.

Memories never die, and dreams never end!

What is time? — John Siwicki

You are the song of every bird, you are the poet's every word, every artist's picture, every writer's play. — Dolly Parton

As a song writer when I first was aware of the Beatles and started, you couldn't avoid hearing it, not that I, I tried. And what, what struck me was not so much the songs or the part of the songs that, that seemed unique to me were, was more melodic at the beginning than, than the lyrics because they were still talking about, you know, I love you, I don't love you and I need you or don't need you. — Jeff Barry

Songwriting is something I really need to work on. I don't have very many songs but I really love it. I would love to be a great song writer some day. — Norah Jones

I first knew Laurie Lewis by her considerable reputation as a fiddle player and a writer of songs. When an opportunity came along to sing with her I seized it. Getting to know her as a singer and a person has been pure pleasure. Her voice is a rare combination of grit and grace, strength and delicacy. Her stories are always true. — Linda Ronstadt

During those times like in my early years as a writer I could actually write a song in ten minutes because all of a sudden a song is writing itself, I'm just putting down words. It just seem each line that you put down flows with the other ones. It's like writing a love letter you don't think about it, it's something from the heart. — Ben E. King

As far as my creative urge is concerned, I do sit down and write my own music ... I'll tell you a writer who I think is a genius: Ray Stevens. He comes up with some of the most fantastic novelty ideas. Dolly Parton also writes well. I like a lot of songs, a lot of writers. — Boudleaux Bryant

When these images clash - as in The Fascist octupus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot - it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. — George Orwell

That is what diminishes the artist and his song. The artist is now hermetically sealed. The publishing company got him his deal and they expect to profit from his songs. So what if he is a better singer than a songwriter; let's put him in a room with a real songwriter. Something great is bound to come ... except very often nothing great comes out of such contrived match-ups. Nobody knows where a great song comes from, and that's why so many writers credit the Lord as a co-writer (though I notice they never offer Him half the writer's royalties) when they come up with a real gem. — Michael Kosser

As a writer, I never paid much attention to the length of titles. I've just wanted them to communicate the emotional overtones of the content of a record or song that they are describing — Jacob Bannon

The thing about this band is that every member of the band is a song-writer so that takes some of the pressure off. — Joey Jordison

I actually produced other people's vocals for a long time when I first signed my publishing deal and I had just sort of decided that I only wanted to be a writer. I would be in all of these writing sessions, and a lot of times my publisher would say, "You should get a demo singer to sing it because then it doesn't identify as a Solange song." — Solange Knowles

Writing is alchemy. Dross becomes gold. Experience is transformed. Pain is changed. Suffering may become song. The ordinary or horrible is pushed by the will of the writer into grace or redemption, a prophetic wail, a screed for justice, an elegy of sadness or sorrow ... There is always a tension between experience and the thing that finally carries it forward, bears its weight, holds it in. Without that tension, one might as well write a shopping list. — Andrea Dworkin

I need a job and I want to be a paperback writer... — The Beatles

There are a lot of people who talk about a formula for being able to start a fan base. But for me, it's been about songs and just being hard on myself as a writer, feeling like there is a purpose to it all. — Corey Smith

I'm a good collaborative writer. I can usually come in and add a couple lines to something, and add a riff or a B-section, or a bridge that will tie things together. I can do stuff like that. But to write a whole song, I don't have the patience for that, I guess. — James Young

Katie appeared as a ghost and cradled him in her arms and carried him, a frail dying version of her old husband, to heaven. The radio which was powered off suddenly comes on and played their song Follow Me. Nobody could see her only Ronan and he smiled and says "I knew you would come back for me love — Annette J. Dunlea

I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life. — Lyle Lovett

We are the total of our longings, he had written. But Kevin was a song-writer, not a poet, and he never did use it. — Guy Gavriel Kay

It's pretty cool that artists like Flo Rida and Bingo Players can be inspired to interpret a song like 'Piano in the Dark' in completely new genres. As an artist and writer, it's the highest compliment we can be paid. — Brenda Russell

Through my years as a writer, I've learnt how to simplify the message and pen songs that have a more specific quality - it's not just about my ego and trying to meet girls. — Jason Mraz

Originally, I wanted a pop career and formed a girl-band 'Genie Queen' managed by Andy McClusky from 'Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark', but it didn't work out. My brother John is the talented singer and song-writer with 'The Razz,' while my other brother Sean is a footballer for Telford United. — Abbey Clancy

Songs will always become a story in some way. I think it's my strongpoint as a writer musically. I don't shy away from it. It's not really an effort. It's how I write songs. — Mike Stud

It is not certain whether the effects of totalitarianism upon verse need be so deadly as its effects on prose. There is a whole series of converging reasons why it is somewhat easier for a poet than a prose writer to feel at home in an authoritarian society.[ ... ]what the poet is saying- that is, what his poem "means" if translated into prose- is relatively unimportant, even to himself. The thought contained in a poem is always simple, and is no more the primary purpose of the poem than the anecdote is the primary purpose of the picture. A poem is an arrangement of sounds and associations, as a painting is an arrangement of brushmarks. For short snatches, indeed, as in the refrain of a song, poetry can even dispense with meaning altogether. — George Orwell

Mo Yan is a writer who, defiantly in the face of those who wish his work were less cartoonish and more straightforward in its political meanings, continues to sing his own peculiar and alluring song. — Dwight Garner

I'm usually really drawn to a song, and I know it would be good to cover if it sounds like something that I could write, or I wished I could write. Sometimes a writer just sounds like they're in your head, and that is really cool for me. — Lorde

As a writer, I marinate, speculate, and hibernate. — Trisha Sugarek

The jazz band's chief stimulus, of course, was the rise of the negro 'blues' and their exploitation by the negro song-writer, W. C. Handy. — Bix Beiderbecke

Both Springsteen and Michael Jackson, who had these huge productions, could always scale them back down to just a song and a melody. All of that influences me. I also try to be a fictional writer, and sometimes I get close, but the things that resonate the most with me - and with everyone else - is what's real. — James Bay

I think the last thing you want to do as a writer, as a storyteller, is to create indifference. I don't necessarily go out of my way to provoke, but I would much rather have a song that triggers a whole myriad of reactions than a song that inspires a shrug of the shoulder. — Dan Hill

If you're somebody who writes songs or writes fiction, a writer that people pay for your opinion in any way, you shouldn't be the least bit uncomfortable giving it to them. People want songwriters to tell them how they think and how they feel. That's what a song is. That's what I want to hear in a song. — Jason Isbell

As the writer of the lyric of the song 'God's Country', I am outraged by the suggestion that somehow I am connected with, believe in, or am sympathetic with Communist or totalitarian philosophy. — Yip Harburg

Along with a lot of other things, becoming a Bob Dylan fan made me a writer. I was never interested in figuring out what the songs meant. I was interested in figuring out my response to them, and other people's responses. I wanted to get closer to the music than I could by listening to it - I wanted to get inside of it, behind it, and writing about it through it, inside of it, behind it, was my way of doing that. — Greil Marcus

You see the genius that Whitney Houston has as an interpreter of material, and you realize why genius can be applied to only a few interpretive performers. She finds meaning and depth and soulfulness in a song that often the writer and composer never really knew was there. — Clive Davis

Songs are snapshots of what you're going through, and mine involve questioning, searching for completion, joy, and truth, and desperation for relief. I'm satisfied with my progress as a writer and a human being, and I know I'm going to get better at both. There will be times when I'll feel like I'm not improving, and I'll get through that. — Melissa Ferrick

I used to play for 200 people and now I'm selling out places that hold 16,000 people. It's a big change, and it's so cool to see people out there screaming the words to songs that I wrote. It just really reassures me that what I'm doing is working, and it really boosts my confidence, as far as on stage as a performer and a writer. — Miranda Lambert

I'm not a pop song lyric writer. I can't just focus on one simple meaning or even a double entendre. — Julian Casablancas

With Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward has written the best sort of novel-a beautiful, important book that's both unflinching and tender, heartbreaking and triumphant. A lyrical and riveting testament to the strength of the human spirit, as well as the power of family and community. Ward's paragraphs are like songs, lifting us even as the authenticity of this world and these characters keeps the ground in clear sight. This is an extraordinary book by an extraordinary writer. — Skip Horack

I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens! — Loudon Wainwright III

There is always something of the writer in the work but I don't think Melville had to be swallowed by a whale to write a great novel. If I had lived the lives of all the characters of the songs I've written, that would truly be an extraordinary story. — Michael Stipe

What you believe one day isn't what you believe the next day and I think every writer secretly believes that they may never be able to do write good song or script again, but they can. — Cameron Crowe

I am not a good enough writer to have an agenda or come up with a message and try to put it into a song. It's more like you write what comes to you ... You try to reflect the mood of the songs. — Eddie Vedder

Our writer would play the piano and then come up with songs on the spot that included all of us. It was so fun! — Odeya Rush

The point is, I can't tell you how to succeed. But I can tell you how not to: Give in to the shame of being rejected and put your manuscript - or painting, song, voice, dance moves, [insert passion here] - in the coffin that is your bedside drawer and close it for good. I guarantee you that it won't take you anywhere. Or you could do what this writer did: Give in to your obsession instead. — Kathryn Stockett

The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one. — Colm Toibin

It's sometimes hard to know who's choosing whom - the poem, the song, or the writer. — Cornelius Eady