Quotes About Lyrics

I never write a tune before the lyrics. I get the lyrics and then I write around them. Some people write music and the lyrics come along and they say, 'Oh yeah, I've got something to fit that.' If that's the way people write songs, I feel like you might as well just go to the supermarket.

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

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.

I'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.

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.

I write the music because I can't really write lyrics. But I can write chords like Robin's never heard of. So I provide the music for them to add the lyrics to.

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.

The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.

Pretty much any given day, barring some major distraction, I get melodies coming to me. Lyrics don't come quite as easily. So I've been inventing little projects and challenges to sort of kick my ass with the lyrics.

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.

My role is almost a sight-gag. I have to be a woman to sing the lyrics "I am a man" to have it be a joke. I start the lyric in a male-register and a whole coloratura up into a soprano. And other points in the show... like the guy who likes to be treated like a baby and wear a diaper!

I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.

I always start with the lyrics, because starting with the music means the words will be bad.

I remember listening to like gospel-y blues tunes. I'd just listen to the rhythm and the music was upbeat. Always upbeat if you get like a good rhythm you can nod your head. You just feel good. But then when you listen to the lyrics it was quite sad.

I always write the lyrics first. There are one or two exceptions over the years, but that's pretty much the way it's been. The process of applying music to words is a bit like scoring a film. You've got imagery.

I 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.

I grew up with all kinds of music, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

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.

The 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.

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 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.

We had to sit in this courtroom in Reno for six weeks. It was like Disneyworld. We had no idea what a subliminal message was - it was just a combination of some weird guitar sounds, and the way I exhaled between lyrics. I had to sing 'Better by You, Better Than Me' in court, a cappella. I think that was when the judge thought, 'What am I doing here? No band goes out of its way to kill its fans'.

I think my voice worked out fine, but it was a lot of work for me. And I was very self-conscious about it. I was a bit self-conscious about writing lyrics too.

I can be stupid in my lyrics or say whatever I want without having to worry about anybody else's feeling or anybody being embarrassed by it or anything like that.

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.

Gilmartins 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!

I hate to say this, but I always listen to the music and the instrumentation first, and then grab on to the lyrics later.

I don't think there are any songs that I've written in the past that I now disagree. It's kind of like tattoos; I would never regret a tattoo, because it was how I felt at that time in my life. I don't think I've ever said anything that I would take back. So far, so good! I would probably change the music, or change how I sing it, maybe do it a little bit cooler, or a bit more grown-up. But I don't think that there are any lyrics that I regret.

I 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!

Most Radiohead songs are actually REM songs, I just have a mentally ill child read the lyrics aloud and then I change the melodies a bit.

I never really liked the lyrics or the sameness of the music. It always seemed to have the same rhythm or whatever. But when it turned a little more rock, I kind of liked it. I like what Kid Rock did to country. I like all the modern, new stuff that's coming out, and it just so happens that my boyfriend is not a country player, but he was a rock musician.

I take things a little bit more critically now, like, "What did I think I was saying in that song? What is this song about?" I thought the lyrics were incredibly descriptive, and now they sound really cryptic and weird. I'd like to also think that when I listen to songs from Something About Airplanes that I'm proud of my development as a writer. I don't think I was doing anything poorly at that time, but I can certainly see how my writing has changed.

A lot of the people I was writing with think a lot more about lyrics and a lot more about the details from the beginning. That kind of thinking made me a little self-conscious because I was suddenly having to judge what I was doing early on in the process.

A more detailed world is a more complicated and complex one, and therefore a more empathetic one. I feel Gord's Downie lyrics are exceptionally empathetic, or that's what they accomplish. The fact that they can cross all those cultural cliques and boundaries really amplifies that, to me.

Now who is the king of these lewd, ludicrous, lucrative lyrics; who could inherit the title, to put the youth in hysterics; using his music as spirit

Music's staying power is a function of how timeless the lyrics, song and production are.

I 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.

I'm not psychic, but my lyrics are.

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.

Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it.

It's been very humbling and very cool to see [that at] each show I tend to see more and more kids lock onto the new lyrics and every night they start to sing louder and louder and it's just been very exciting.

It's such a rush doing a concert and seeing people actually mouthing the lyrics.

Once you become somebody, that don't mean you distance yourself from people. There is no such thing as no one can walk the streets or go outside. That I will never believe. There might be some fanfare. There might be some paparazzi, but you can control that. All you have to do is maintain the person you were before that when you would tell someone to back up or get out of my way or just stop and address people. Give them what they want. Have a smile, kick a few lyrics, and be out.

I think it need realness, you should speak on thing that you know about, that you being from, that you experienced or that you been around, you know. I think you need a good hook, good beats and good lyrics.

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.

I'm a bit of an insomniac. I'm always thinking. I've got a lot of ideas for lyrics and shows. I have a notepad by the side of the bed and voice recorders around the house.

I never really liked poetry readings; I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group.