Quotes About Lyrics

First we start with the lyrics. Most of the lyrics are done by Stefan Kaufmann and me. When we have enough lyrics and enough stories we have the lines to make titles. Then we collect all the ideas of everybody in the band and see which ideas fit together the best with the lyrics to get the right atmosphere. That's the way we compose.

I don't know why, but there's a certain element of panic in writing lyrics that I'm not sure I enjoy. I don't write lyrics first, ever. I've never done that. So, in a sense, the lyrics are a bit of an afterthought - it's music first.

Sometimes I get ideas for lyrics in anyplace, but I work a lot in the studio. So I collect little bits of lyrics. I go through the box of lyrics I have and see if something fits.

I didn't even write the lyrics down. I got in the booth, I put down a little guitar riff and the idea I had was it was going to be really simple, I just want it to be all about the lyrics and I just literally sang the lyrics.

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

It turned out so well because it was the first album that I could identify with in terms of lyrics. ("Captain Fantastic") It was passionate...I could associate myself with every song...It's a unique album in our history. This was the story of us..."Curtains", the lyrics to that are so beautiful because it sums up our friendship so much, and our relationship.

I 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.

The one good thing about a movie and music and stuff like that: Sometimes it's a counterpoint between the movie and the music itself, the difference and the tension they build together. I think that could be something that helped with me, because when I write songs now, I write lyrics a bit like that. I try to make the music be an interesting twist on the lyrics and help tell the story in a - I don't tell crazy stories, you know? So a lot of times, the twist is in the subtleties. The twist is in the way the story's told.

I mean, there's an aspect I've always said that is - it's, you know, it's not poetry but it's kind of like it. It's not song lyrics but it's kind of like song lyrics. It's not rap but it's kind of like rap. And it's not stand-up comedy but it is kind of like stand-up comedy. It's all those things together.

Sometimes people will request a song I haven't played in a while and I'll play it and singing the lyrics will mean something different to me as a 35 year-old person than they did when I was 25. I know I'm still that person who wrote it and thought I knew what I meant when I was writing them. They meant something very exact to me in that time of my life. But it's really cool when those same lyrics can transform into something else and mean something entirely different to me.

When I published my first novel, Slammed, I included lyrics at the beginning of each chapter from one of my favorite bands, The Avett Brothers. The overwhelmingly positive response from readers to those lyrics really surprised me.

I was just thinking of Rush. I went to see Rush a few years ago, because my record label guy in the States really wanted to go. We had crazy good seats. It was fascinating watching the crowd - mostly men - who were so moved by these really esoteric lyrics. I don't know Neil Peart's lyrics super well, but they're not that straightforward to me.

Music is for making people happy, lyrics tell them who they are. Everybody is free to interpret the music, as they want. The lyrics of my songs are about different things, but it's all about my issues.

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.

I like my lyrics to feel conversational and truthful, as if we're having real talk. I don't really like generic lyrics.

I 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.

It's not like changing one word with my lyrics is going to make them more intelligible or relatable. I was always very misunderstood and taken as very pretentious and serious all the time. I would think, "Do you not see there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek and humor here?"

Mimesis has longevity on its side. But Oasis wrote two of the greatest pop songs of all time, each with lyrics that mean less and less the more you think about them. So I'm going to have to go with the Gallagher brothers.

Cornelius Cardew very famous in Britain, because he was the darling of the avant-garde, and he played in a band called AMM, which was an improvising band in the '60s. Paul McCartney used to come watch them. Later on in life, he became disenchanted with avant-garde music, because he felt it couldn't reach the public. It didn't have a wide enough appeal. So he'd take these tunes of old English folk songs and write Stalinist lyrics over the top of them. I do think that when he changed to folk songs, he actually lost the tiny audience he already had, which is quite interesting.

It's part of me to get off on those moments where... well, what people would call attention. Obviously, that isn't the be-all and end-all of life, but at the states of creativity that I've reached, well, it helps the lyrics along a little bit.

I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

People pay attention to lyrics, and the race matter was delicate.

If my lyrics mean something special to someone... that's the most important thing to me.

I've read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you're singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.

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

If you read about a tree, and there is a description, you have to grow that tree in your mind. So that's an active way of looking at media, whereas a movie or a TV will be passive, because they are showing you the tree. In the same way, when somebody sings a song for you, those words get so much in the foreground, that even if you take a minor key of music and then put like happy lyrics to it and people think it's a happy song. So, in a song, you are told what to feel, whereas, in an instrumental music, you get as much out of it as you are willing to put into it.

Music is very nebulous, and you can conjure up a lot of moods with music. But lyrics - they're a lot more tangible. They're much more specific. And you want to say something meaningful and creative and artistic and that tells a story and that takes people someplace else.

I used to sit on the roof of the apartment where Jim Morrison used to write his early lyrics

I love to write and have the basic foundation of what the song's all about. Then once the drums are done it's time for fun for me, because I don't know what I'm going to sing yet, and melody-wise I don't even have my lyrics written.

I get a lot of shit because I put "I" in the lyrics all the time. The "I" is always for someone else... When I say "I," it's so that when that person is singing along with the song, it empowers them.

It's more like you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs. Take 'Rearviewmirror', we start off with the music and it kinds of propels the lyrics. It made me feel like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There's an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave.

I really enjoy writing lyrics, I enjoy harmonies and I enjoy hearing the organic side of production because I have to do so much non- organic for a living for other artists, it's just a break for me, for my ears and it confuses people that think my music is supposed to sound like the stuff I do for my day job, but that's just people that don't know me.

Way 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.

Pop music has always adopted the style of marrying upbeat melodies to dour lyrics.

As a lyricist, you love to hear other great lyrics or other great concepts.

I usually have a song in my head. I'm thinking music, I'm thinking lyrics. Music helps me get to those moments. The moments between the moments.

I have way too many songs that have music but don't have lyrics.

Well, 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.

I saw "Follies" again at thirty, and you know, I had this great appreciation for [Stephen] Sondheim's brilliance, his lyrics.

I 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.

Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day.

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?

Lyrics 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.

If you're 30, 40 years old, you're not getting listened to by minors. Like, Jay Z has some of the sickest lyrics ever, but I would never buy his CD, just because of my age and because of his age.

As accurately as I possibly can. I explain , to my kid, that love's an elusive, fragile and resilient thing. And as far as the lyrics, I say that part of being an adult is being sexual, and when you're in a relationship, to express yourself that way is a beautiful thing.

Alot of my lyrics are about beating my children. 'Hit the bottom and escape' is a cry for help. oh god someone stop me

I get to play with pop music and mix up the style. It's fun to play with party music and nice to get into the club. My big love is songwriting. I write the lyrics and the vocals, and I work with the producers.

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