Quotes About Lyrics

I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.

We treat the lyrics like the woman any man wants to impress the most. We give the lyrics all the attention we can. I'm not sure other formats are remembering that the lyrics are what it's all about.

As you can imagine, over the years I have been asked many times to discuss and explain my song "American Pie." I have never discussed the lyrics, but have admitted to the Holly reference in the opening stanzas. You will find many interpretations of my lyrics but none of them by me. You will find many “interpretations” of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn’t this fun? Sorry to leave you all on your own like this but long ago I realized that songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence.

Lyrics are back, maybe. It seems like there was a bit of an attitude that lyrics are not important.

I find it much easier to write comic-books than lyrics actually because it's a natural dialogue. Writing song lyrics is not natural but over the years I know what I need to know to get it done. I find it quite easy to capture a character and use my own personality and humour.

What's the coolest thing in the world is when you have fans that know the lyrics to your songs. That's amazing! Such a great feeling! When I go out there and am playing "Grinnin' In Your Face" and people are singing the lyrics to it, that's amazing to me. I'm actually taking a song where people wouldn't know it, and I'm bringing it back. It's a really cool feeling.

When you listen to the music in this film [Despicable Me], it's working on the level of melody, but the other key element is lyrics. There are a number of songs in the film where the lyrics themselves are very much speaking to the essence of what Ted Geisel was setting out to do.

So much of rock lyrics is just a mirror of real feeling. It doesn't feel dangerous to me. They just feel like "rock lyrics."

(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.

Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

I tell the songwriter's story. When I read people's lyrics, I'm so amazed. I want to tell this story and make it part of my life. I usually can't write lyrics down, but I can sure tell that story. You've got to make people feel the hurt and love in each song.

It's funny, I write lyrics in a bizarre way - I'm always writing lyrics, mostly when we're traveling or walking around New York, that's when I'm writing most of the stuff.

I want to say my life inspires my lyrics, but I also try to abstract them as much as possible because I don't want to refer to my life explicitly. I'm definitely really embarrassed by my lyrics.

Well a good writer writes, a good musician listens to a lot more than he actually composes, and if you're going to do lyrics - well, there's a Freudian slip. That's not even a slip, that's a Freudian move: I said going to do lyrics. If you really want it to ring true, you'll live it first. Go really get your heart broken!

I was babysitting the night High School Musical premiered last year. I watched with the kids and we sang along to the lyrics. I was making $12 an hour.

When she awoke there was a melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever hearing before. 'Perhaps I made it up,' she thought. Then it came to her - the name of the song and all its lyrics just as she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, 'There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have sung all the songs there are.

When I see other rappers' lyrics of "I don't do what I don't like to do", I feel like it's really cool and there's also an envious side to me about it.

I usually get my lyrics when I let my mind wander, when you're not really awake, but not yet fully asleep. I keep an open notebook by my bed and then just write whatever comes to me.

The 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.

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.

When I'm playing music I'm usually not thinking of surfing, just because I'm usually thinking about the chords and the lyrics, and sometimes that messes me up 'cause you'll start thinking, "Wait, how am I doing this?" But when I'm surfing, I'm usually thinking about music - whether it's an idea for a new song, or just singing a song in my head.

Music should come crashing out of your speakers and grab you, and the lyrics should challenge whatever preconceived notions that listener has.

I'm the guy that gets up at three in the morning to jot down an entire sheet of lyrics for something that won't be recorded for six months. You have to get it down when you can, because thoughts are fluid.

I was going on this desert adventure with some friends and we were like, "How amazing would it be to just drag all these mirrors out there?" A lot of times I do things as an impulse and find out my inspirations afterward. Even with songs and lyrics, it can take me years to find out what I was actually trying to do.

Playing the guitar, you kind of lock into a rhythm and a groove, and then it relaxes me to make up lyrics and sing.

If you want meaning, you read poetry or a novel or something, you don't read song lyrics. You're supposed to listen to them with music.

Although it's pretty rare that I'll get completed, finished lyrics to a song and feel like it's done, and then decide that it's not worth doing. Usually, I can tell along the way - even if it's something I've been working on for a couple of months - that it's just not going to work. Maybe I'll come back to it a few months or even a year later, or maybe it's just gone.

But I don't like working on lyrics publicly in the studio - I prefer to take them away and work on them in my bedroom.

Songwriters might write cynical, world-wise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business.

It'd be tricky to read into my lyrics - some are autobiographical, but sometimes I just like the sound of words.

If you really look at my lyrics, nobody's exempt. Nobody's exempt from observation, criticism or what I think is correction.

I should attempt to write a love song, I have written lots of poetry about love so I could turn those into lyrics. I'm a sucker for romance - always have been, always will be. I love walking down the beach and listening to my iPod and belting them out. What would we do without love songs?

I write lyrics everyday as I go. I'm always taking notes in my phone whenever I am inspired by something. Most of my writing starts out as poetry before I put it into songs.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.

I 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.

It's a natural tendency of mine to not even listen to lyrics.

Don't call my lyrics poetry. It's an insult to real poets.

I'm used to getting sexy sometimes in the lyrics.

Sometimes it's nice to be able to reflect on the music itself and then write lyrics that I feel anyone can relate to. It's not my dreaming tree that is dead. The feeling of a loss of hope is universal. There are moments that we've all felt a little bit of it, so I don't think it is something that is too hard to identify with.

When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life. So I bit my tongue. I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

Frankly I don't listen to lyrics (a problem in that I apparently work in musical theatre) I just want a good tune that doesn't require the use of too much grey matter.

I would always write lyrics and songs on the piano.

The process is always the same. I get an inspiration for a new song, I put it down on paper immediately so I won't lose it. When I am ready to go to the studio with it, I play it a few times on the piano and edit, add, and type the lyrics and take it to the studio. Sometimes I don't have anything on paper.

I still to this day get the most inspiration from rap lyrics.

Usually when I write lyrics I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of other stuff. Some of my favourite lyricists are like Lou Reed, kind of the classics - Bob Dylan and stuff like that.

If it wasn't for this person's privacy, I'd be able to talk pretty freely about this subject on a personal level. The record's about not her. It's about my struggles through years of dealing with the aftermath of lost love and longing and just mediocrity and just bad news, like life stuff. And in the [record], where the title comes from, the lyrics are actually a conversation between me and another girl, not this Emma character.

Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction...All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland...I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around...Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

If you can express something in the simplest way possible, I think there's something noble in that. It's easy to flesh stuff out and get all purple with it, being cryptic and wearing masks... I think it's a bit adolescent. I wanted to write in a way that was vulnerable. I wanted to have courage in stripping back the opaque stuff so it was just raw. I like lyrics that are a lifeline, that have a purpose to them and are not just meandering around in a masturbatory way. They cut the page.