Songwriting Quotes
Quotes tagged as "songwriting"
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“Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”
― Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
― 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.”
―
―

“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.”
―
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.”
―

“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.”
― Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile
― 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.”
― Killosophy
― Killosophy

“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.”
― Killosophy
― Killosophy

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

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

“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.”
― Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1954-1981, With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes
― Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1954-1981, With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes

“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.”
― Juliet, Naked
― Juliet, Naked
“I can't discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines. You can't discover that in the raw. ~ Leonard Cohen”
― Songwriters On Songwriting
― Songwriters On Songwriting

“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”».”
― Опосредованно
― Опосредованно

“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”
― Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
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”
― Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“In order to become a better innovator, you're going to learn how to write songs.”
― The Reason for the Rhymes: Mastering the Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning to Write Songs
― The Reason for the Rhymes: Mastering the Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning to Write Songs
“The most sacred ritual a songwriter must honour is this daily offering to creativity. It can be five hours in a dedicated space or five minutes in a window seat on a plane, but it must be done. Write your heart and do it every day, first thing in the morning if you can. Everything else is icing on the proverbial cake.”
―
―

“By combining certain elements of technique which ignite each other I could shit the levels of perception, time-frame structures and systems of rythm which would give my songs a brighter countenance, call them up from the grave [...] It was like parts of my psyche were being communicated to by angels. There was a big fire in the fireplace and the wind was making it roar.”
― Chronicles: Volume One
― Chronicles: Volume One
“The spark of the idea was hope; the work that led to the song was faith; the completion of the song leads to worship, because in that startling moment of clarity when the song exists in time and history and takes up the narrative space in the story of the world—a space that had been empty, unwritten, unknown by all who are subject to time—then it is obvious (and humbling) that a great mystery is at play.
I hope it's clear that I'm not talking about the quality (or lack thereof) of the song itself. That's irrelevant. The point is, time is unfolding like a scroll, and we're letters on the parchment, helping to make up the words that tell the story. Each of us is a character, in both senses of the word. At times, characters become aware that they're part of a story, and that brings the realization, first, there is an author, and second, they are not him.
This realization is good and proper, and leads into the courts of praise, if not the throne room itself.”
― Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making
I hope it's clear that I'm not talking about the quality (or lack thereof) of the song itself. That's irrelevant. The point is, time is unfolding like a scroll, and we're letters on the parchment, helping to make up the words that tell the story. Each of us is a character, in both senses of the word. At times, characters become aware that they're part of a story, and that brings the realization, first, there is an author, and second, they are not him.
This realization is good and proper, and leads into the courts of praise, if not the throne room itself.”
― Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making
“At the very least, in a world where we walk around numb as lepers so much of the time, a song can make you actually feel something, a tingle in a place you thought long dead. That's what the best songs—the best works of art—do for me.”
―
―

“The pièce de résistance, put into the can on the very first day, owed its inspiration to Little Richard, who would whip audiences to further frenzy between numbers by self-congratulatory cries of “Well...all right!” Buddy turned the phrase into a gentle love song infused with all his special quality of patience and optimism and his developing ability to make personal sentiments into universal ones. “Well, All Right” is a riposte to all the criticism and condescension that teenagers faced from their elders in the rock 'n' roll fifties—and have in every decade since. The setting is as adventurously simple as that of “Everyday”: Buddy plays flamenco-accented acoustic guitar, with only a plashing cymbal for company. The mood is not one of youthful anger and defiance but of maturity before its time: calm, stoical, steadfast in affirming its “dreams and wishes.” The intimacy in the voice could equally be that of lover or elder brother. Girl or boy, you can imagine you and he are alone together, gazing into the fire and imagining a bright future when the young will “live and love with all our might,” which could almost be a prophecy of the sixties' hippie culture.”
― Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly
― Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly

“I start with the title first. From this title I work out the psychology of the tune. Next I write the lyric backward, and in this way build it up to a climax. In the lyric I work first for the climax, and if I can’t find a good climactic line I throw out the tune . . . I consult rhyme dictionaries. I swear by them. For long, easy rhymes I use Andrew Loring’s Lexicon. Other books I have in constant use are Roget’s ‘Thesaurus,’ and atlas, Fowler’s ‘Modern English Usage’ and a dictionary”
― The Letters of Cole Porter
― The Letters of Cole Porter
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