Popular quotes about Lyrics! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The challenges change depending on the song. There are some songs where the lyrics are really a challenge and then there are other songs where the lyrics are there and the music is a challenge. And then you've got rock songs where the challenge is the tightness of the arrangement with the band. The music and the lyrics are there, but it's a challenge to get the arrangement correct. So I wouldn't be able to point to one thing. What the challenge is changes all of the time.
Jonathan JacksonI'm particularly attuned to lyrics, and very often a bad set of lyrics will ruin a song for me, while my friends will be just grooving on the music. I don't mean that it has to be about anything in particular, but there has to be some art applied to it, simple or otherwise.
Bruce CockburnFrank [Zappa] was not a big fan of having lyrics, but sometimes he had things to say that lent themselves to lyrics.
Gail ZappaI'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.
Abbie Cornish(Talks about Lucky You) "The song was about a girl who didn't fit in and she didn't care and she was different than everyone else. I think there's a long chorus of me singing "Do do do do do do do do do do". It's very young and I look back and it's kind of interesting to hear those kind of storylines and the lyrics that I used to write compared to the lyrics that I write now.
Taylor SwiftOne difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.
Stephen SondheimI detest 'love lyrics.' I think one of the causes of bad mental health in the United States is that people have been raised on 'love lyrics.
Frank ZappaYou can get into a comfort zone writing lyrics, like wearing a mask. But I wanted to feel uncomfortable when I was listening back to the lyrics; I wanted to squirm.
Yannis PhilippakisYeah. My singing and my songs were very influenced by all of that. People would come up to me and ask, Is that a Billie Holiday song? I'd say, No, it's my song. The lyrics would be in my style, but the songs would be very jazzy.
Regina SpektorI was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.
Alanis MorissetteI have seen quite a few folk whom I know to be both fair minded and, as it happens,[Bob] Dylan fans, take up cudgels for this position. To them, it's not necessarily that Dylan doesn't merit the highest honour. It's that he doesn't merit this specific highest honour [Nobel prize], in the way a champion pole vaulter shouldn't be given a medal for the long jump. It is in this group that the Wahey!s are mainly to be found, firing off jests, or mock solemnly reciting Dylan's sillier lyrics as if these are entirely representative of his oeuvre.
David BennunThe danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of getting stuck doing the music. When I make an album, I write music, I write lyrics, I come up with the visual design, etc. I get to do all of that stuff.
David Grubbs"On Script" is one of my favorite songs I've ever written. I'd just been jamming on it one day, and again I was struggling with lyrics. I'm still figuring out what it's about. I've seen a couple of reviews that are like, "It's about the monotony of playing the same songs every night," because I say, "On script every night/Like a well-rehearsed stage show." It's not about that at all, but I find that funny, how people project what they think about me, or songwriters in general.
Courtney BarnettI'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 PiraroThe only thing I can think of is my favorite album at the moment by this guy called Father John Misty, and the album is called I Love You, Honeybear. It's just brilliant. It's the album I'm currently obsessed with. It is original, and the lyrics are fantastic and [it's] brilliant. So that's blowing me away.
Daniel RadcliffeI think we need to sort of broaden our definition of poetry, which maybe it's a good thing that they just gave this Nobel Prize to [Bob] Dylan because blurring the lines of song lyrics and also hip-hop for me is like some of the greatest uses - most innovative uses of language in my lifetime.
Jim JarmuschI mean, my wife is always like - I don't write lyrics. So I couldn't, like, really technically write a song for anyone. I could write a very nice instrumental. So she always sort of gives me a hard time because it's just such a ridiculously impossible standard to live up to, that your step-dad wrote that song for your mom.
Mark RonsonEven at the time, I realised this couldn't be right, that this interpretation didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasn't an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.
Kazuo IshiguroPlaying the guitar, you kind of lock into a rhythm and a groove, and then it relaxes me to make up lyrics and sing.
Cat PowerGilmartins voice is angelic, but her lyrical subjects are often serious and slightly sad. The conflict of the beauty of her voice and the sadness of her lyrics makes for great music!
Jeff BelangerI told Wayne to his face he was the dopest MC out. MC, not rapper. I told him to his face because I believe that, Wayne is nice! Wayne is bananas with his lyrics, with his whole delivery, with his whole thing. Lil Wayne is the man!
KRS-OneMen felt a chill in their hearts; a damp in their minds. In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth,one subterfuge was tried after anothersentences swelled, adjectives multiplied, lyrics became epics.
Virginia WoolfIn Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn't come over. I've tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn't work. I've got to know everything about a culture, and I don't.
PSYAs 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 BarryI write about things that tear me apart, and it's all very personal to me. It's funny to hear people disassemble the lyrics. If they get it wrong, it almost means more to me, because it's morphed into something that is meaningful to them.
Robby TakacThe younger people get into the lyrics in a different way; there's much more of a tactile understanding, which is the way I prefer it.
David BowieI have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation.
Knut HamsunI don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.
Gavin RossdaleLyrics are always misleading because they make people think that that's what the music is about.
Brian EnoI want to do a stripped-down album. That style is actually where my heart is - storytelling and just letting the voice and the lyrics talk for themselves. I still want to write the perfect song and sing it in the most honest, undressed way. But I feel like I have to gather more experiences and more layers in my voice. I have to live more to be able to tell this tale. So I'm saving my folk record. I have a feeling nobody will understand it.
Lykke LiFrom her gospel-singing mother Cissy Houston, her legendary pop-diva cousin Dionne Warwick, and her Queen of Soul godmother Aretha Franklin, she [Whitney Houston] inherited gifts for skillfully interpreting lyrics and endowing them with new depth and jeweled nuance.
AberjhaniI probably listen to more instrumental music than music with lyrics, but at the same time I do love both.
FlumeThe 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 BokanWhen I write, it is always the melody that comes first, and it just happens to be the case that the most beautiful tunes are sad, and the lyrics follow the mood of the melody.
Francoise HardyI'd break out in hives if I had to sing (`Stairway to Heaven') in every show. I wrote those lyrics and found that song to be of some importance and consequence in 1971, but 17 years later, I don't know. It's just not for me. I sang it at the Atlantic Records show because I'm an old softie and it was my way of saying thank you to Atlantic because I've been with them for 20 years. But no more of `Stairway to Heaven' for me.
Robert PlantI was a kid who got picked on in school, and now the guys beating up those kids were wearing red caps and using my music to fuel that aggression. But if they listen to the lyrics, the aggression is targeted at them.
Fred DurstNothing really goes through my head when I'm performing live, I normally just look out into the crowd and see the fans and it makes me feel really happy - especially when they all sing the lyrics back, it's amazing.
Perrie EdwardsIt's the way I make music, I will take two ideas and smash them together and if they sit well together for me then that's fine, and it's the same with the lyrics - if I see a couple of lines and I like the way they look on the page then I'll use them. I find they take on a meaning of their own, it's very difficult to explain how I actually go about all that.
ThighpaulsandraI would say I'd rather dig a ditch, you know, do hard, manual labor than write lyrics.
Natalie MerchantWill sat where he was, gazing at the silver bowl in front of him; a white rose was floating in it, and he seemed prepared to stare at it until it went under. In the Kitchen Bridget was still singing one of her awful sad songs; the lyrics drifted in through the door: "Twas on an evening fair I went to take the air, I heard a maid making her moan; Said, 'Saw ye my father? Or ye my mother? Or saw ye my brother John? Or saw ye the lad that I love best, And his name it is Sweet William?" I may murder her, Tessa thought. Let her make a song about that.
Cassandra ClareI write my songs usually while I'm walking around. Or in a car. Or in a bus, a plane, something like that. I jot down lyrics wherever I am. Usually it's on a vomit bag on an airplane or something. I just look for a pen.
Joshua RadinWhen I first started writing lyrics and stuff, I was writing it to garage, and obviously garage kind of progressed to grime.
Lady SovereignI think what interests me the most is when the two things are developed at the same time, which certainly feels natural for the way of working when there is no dialogue. You sort of depend on the music to be that, especially when there's lyrics in the music.
Matthew BarneyAll my lyrics are open to interpretation by the individual and imply many different meanings, therefore their relevance is purely subjective.
Ian CurtisI would play all the parts of the song, show them the way it went together. Then I'd basically break down an arrangement - I wouldn't plan endings or beginnings - so they knew everything that was going on. I had the lyrics on a prompter so that I could remember everything I'd written, and I was able to just get into the groove and play with them. I think "Peace Trail" is one of the exceptions, where it's a later take. It just happened really quickly.
Neil Young