Popular quotes about Lyrics! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
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.
Garth BrooksI'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 CockburnI was quite surprised when I started looking at the lyrics for 'Punk Prayer'. Given its brutal style, I did not expect the lyrics to be so well written and thought through. But the more I understood of it, the more I realised that this was not only a protest, it was brilliant art as well. So I decided I would try to strip away the layers that made me sceptical in the first place, and focus on the desperate beauty Pussy Riot have conceived in this song.
ModdiLyrics are back, maybe. It seems like there was a bit of an attitude that lyrics are not important.
Stephen MalkmusPeople ask me if I left the lyrics open to ambiguity. Of course I did. I wanted to make a whole series of complex statements. The lyrics had to do with the state of society at the time.
Don McLeanI didn't want the lyrics to be about specific things in my life, I wanted them to be about generalised experiences I'd had. So when I'm writing about relationships or somebody leaving you or something, a lot of lyrics are partly about failed relationships I'd had, but they were also about my Dad, and being abandoned as a kid.
Zachary Cole SmithI feel like people mislead themselves when they tell themselves they're into me because of the lyrics. From my vantage point, people aren't into me because of the content, because of the lyrics. Because there's a million of rappers who have great content.
Talib KweliIf you can say the lyrics almost like a poem and they stand up, that's a great thing. Some songs have great lyrics and I don't like the melodies, and vice versa.
Harry Connick, Jr.People say, "You should write lyrics" and I say I'm quite happy not to, because I like being part of that process where you write your version of what someone else's lyrics are saying to you, and that enjoyment has never changed.
Elton JohnSo much of rock lyrics is just a mirror of real feeling. It doesn't feel dangerous to me. They just feel like "rock lyrics."
Stephen MalkmusI wrote out the lyrics that I would do at MAMA 4~5 days in advance. After I said that, Zico hyung told me that it's dangerous to write lyrics quickly like that and that I should be carefully.
Kim Nam-joonThe lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.
Stephen MalkmusI like my lyrics to feel conversational and truthful, as if we're having real talk. I don't really like generic lyrics.
Meredith BrooksI approach song writing three different ways. One way is where I write the initial melody and lyrics first and then take it in to the producer to collaborate. Another way is where the producer sends me his initial musical track ideas and then I write the lyrics and melody over his track. The third way is where we just jam out in the studio and see what we come up with.
ManikaI think me, Sean Bonnette and Laura Jane Grace, and a lot of the bands people feel that way about, we're just really honest in our lyrics. I think we got really lucky in that the right kind of people who would appreciate that heard us at the right time, because there are plenty of people that are honest in their lyrics.
Jeff RosenstockThe lyrics just come out, and I don't know where from. I'm an incredible failure in relationships. I think there's a romantic ideal that I'm aspiring for. I don't know. The lyrics are always about unsuccessful relationships. They're not all about the love between a man and a woman. It's about friendship and family. Deep down there's a lot of talk about general existence.
Chris MartinJust because I said lyrics are a sign of the inability to sing doesn't mean....A) I believe that, or B) I don't think they're cool. They are cool. Words are great. I sing along with my favorite songs, but when I am drumming and singing, the words become a note that for me. In the process of playing they have more emotional impact as notes then an actual word.
Brian ChippendaleIronically, when I was playing in my first band, I would deliberately not write down any lyrics. I have a really good memory and I would just keep them in my head.
Craig FinnWith rock music, the amount of power that you can generate, the intensity behind the intentions of your lyrics that you can really reflect through rock music - you can't do that in jazz. You can't do that with classical.
Serj TankianBob Dylan has a way with words that simply blows me away. When he forgets his lyrics he just makes up new ones on the spot, that is what I called talented!
Gavin RossdaleI tend to get a little quirkier and crazier with my lyrics and come from a different angle when I'm writing for myself.
Bonnie McKeeI don't really plan what comes out of my mouth, and that's what makes most of my lyrics entertaining.
KeshaIf my lyrics mean something special to someone... that's the most important thing to me.
Dia FramptonI 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 BennunI'd much rather talk about guitar playing. I hate it when people ask me about my lyrics. I always feel like telling them to just go and read them.
James HetfieldThe 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 RadcliffeThe dilemma of the eighth-grade dance is that boys and girls use music in different ways. Girls enjoy music they can dance to, music with strong vocals and catchy melodies. Boys, on the other hand, enjoy music they can improve by making up filthy new lyrics.
Rob SheffieldI want to suggest a feeling. It's ridiculous to assume you can state an opinion. Somebody else can never relate to the lyric in the same way because their whole experience is different. You can only suggest, then people add their own history and experience to the lyrics.
Danielle DaxI 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 RonsonI'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.
Corey TaylorI feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist.
Mike GordonI had this perverse gravitation towards using a terrible clichรฉ sandwiched in between absurd non-clichรฉs because I thought it gave the clichรฉ a new resonance. It kills me when my lyrics are misquoted, but as long as people are quoting them right, I don't care what anybody has to say about them.
Paul BanksWay back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces.
Alan MooreWe're going to sing about things that matter to us. The balancing act is to present these ideas but also make the music exciting and sort of fun enough that even if you're not paying attention to the lyrics, you might still like the songs anyway. That's the idea.
Conor OberstThen, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.
Geddy LeeWell, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.
Tom MorelloIt'd be tricky to read into my lyrics - some are autobiographical, but sometimes I just like the sound of words.
Max TundraLyrics should not need to stand on their own; many of [Bob] Dylan's do, but in common with other great lyricists, he has written plenty that falters on the page but soars in song.
David BennunThe things I see every day inspire my sound and lyrics, like certain people and situations that stick out in my mind. There are also certain musicians I love whose music and styles inspire me.
BirdyWhen there are no lyrics there are many parts of the imagination that can fill in the meanings of the music, so I strongly believe that it can be more powerful at times.
Tom DeLongeI 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 RossdaleAll the way out I listen to the car AM radio, bad lyrics of trailer park love, gin and tonic love, strobe light love, lost and found love, lost and found and lost love, lost and lost and lost loveโsome people were having no luck at all. The DJ sounds quick and smooth and after-shaved, the rest of the world a mess by comparison.
Lorrie MooreI saw that something changed in terms of the way I approach writing. I don't know. Before, everything was just sort of pieced together; and more and more nowadays I'll have complete songs - chords, lyrics, a melody - and we'll apply to those songs what we feel is required. That has happened much more on Humbug album than on any of the others.
Alex Turner