Songwriting Quotes

“Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Sometimes I just want to paint the words "It's my fault" across my forehead to save people the time of being pissed off at me.”
― Christina Westover

“I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.”
― Frank Harte

“so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...

So ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.”
― Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty

“Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Songwriting is a bitch. And then it has puppies”
― Steven Tyler

“I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“If I knew what to do
I'd do more than write a song for you”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“I tried to look at writing a song almost like solving a mystery. The song was there, buried somewhere in my brain. All I had to do was follow the clues until I figured it out.”
― Jon Skovron, Struts & Frets

“I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing.”
― Jeff Bowen

“There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I hereby grant you permission to write crap. The more the better. Remember, crap makes the best fertilizer.”
― Pat Pattison

“Unless the object of the singer’s affection is a vampire, surely what Hart means is unphotogenic. Only vampires are unphotographable, but affectionate ‘-enic’ rhymes are hard to come by.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1954-1981, With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes

“I'm sitting here doing nothing but ageing while my guitar gently weeps”
― George Harrison, The Beatles Anthology

“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows”
― Leonard Cohen

“Of course Tucker Crowe was in pain when he made [the record], but he couldn't just march into a recording studio and start howling. He'd have sounded mad and pathetic. He had to calm the rage, tame it and shape it so that it could be contained in the tight-fitting songs. Then he had to dress it up so that it sounded more like itself.”
― Nick Hornby, Juliet, Naked

“A steampunk nation
Baby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'cause
Our art's official and only partially artificial
And our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal but
There's not where it settles
Because it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettle

And now we face it, this creation we made to
To save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it's
Our safeway they make into a pathetic revelation
In our steampunk nation
Our steampunk nation”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Music is energy, emotion, expression, escapism, enlightenment. Music is so much more than just entertainment.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“And every time a song is done, it whispers, you can go now... you aren't needed anymore.”
― Kristin Hersh, Rat Girl

“When you're at odds with yourself, it's hard to create. Sometimes the writing process is as easy as opening up the window and letting in the breeze. And sometimes it's like chiseling away at a block of granite with a pencil.”
― Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue

“Like Gil, Brian had been raised as an only child by strong women. "It shaped our views of ourselves. We considered ourselves loners, on the outside of society," said Jackson. And the two of them often preferred being alone to being around other people.”
― Marcus Baram, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man

“In a city that attracted protesters, organizers, and activists of every variety, debating issues across the political spectrum and with a huge population of black people, the messages in his lyrics were received with enthusiasm. “This was Chocolate City. People in DC were pretty sophisticated and they liked his political wit, and I think he liked speaking truth to power in the heart of the government.”
― Marcus Baram, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man

“We sing when we have too much time to just speak.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“After writing a song, there’s first a feeling of elation followed by the sinking feeling that it will never happen again, and you go back to thinking that you can't do it. It creates an ongoing feeling of inadequacy.”
― Chrissie Hynde, Reckless: My Life as a Pretender

“Mr. DuBois, you are a rehearsal accompanist. I do not pay you for your musical interpretation.' The impresario marched down the aisle and stood in the middle like the commander of a mutinying ship.
'No, Mr. Ziegfeld. I'm not. I'm a songwriter. My songs are a damn sight better than this garbage.'
One of the midwestern chorus girls gasped.
'Forgive my language,' Henry added.”
― Libba Bray, Lair of Dreams

“Лена очень любила дочь, обожала, как она поет, только если это были чужие песни. А в песнях Веры Лена вместо слов слышала: «Я ничего не читала, даже из школьной программы, я путаю одеть – надеть, я ставлю ударения, как мне удобнее, господи, я слегка переделала “Лавину” Коэна, но никто этого не заметит, потому что у него песня печальная, а у меня слегка в мажоре и гораздо выше, у меня очень маленький словарный запас, но зато я пою с душой и про любовь, а чтобы никто не забыл, что я пою с душой и про любовь, у меня в каждой песне буквально все утыкано словами “душа” и “любовь”».”
― Алексей Сальников, Опосредованно