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The difference between a good song and a great song is a good song is one that you know, you'll put on in your car or you'll dance to it. But I think a great song you'll cry to it, or you get chills. I think a great song says how you feel better than you could.
Taylor SwiftThe interesting thing about a song like 'Bulletproof Heart' - it was [originally] called 'Trans Am' - the interesting thing about the amalgamation of that song was that the song also lived within us, like we all got to live with the song and it was around for about a year before we recorded it again, so the song got to really transform, which you don't really get to do.
Mikey WayWhen writing I just go with the song. I go with the song and try to tell the story. So the story may be "Wonderful Baby", which is a little song. Or it might be a gentle song, "Empty Chairs". Or it might be a rock and roll song like "Prime Time" or "Run, Diana, Run", or "American Pie". I don't know where it's gonna go. I don't have any idea what I'm doing. I just do it. I just keep doing it. I keep taking adva
Don McLeanEveryone has their own experiences with song. It means one thing to me and it means something entirely different to somebody else. I have a song called 'Apple Cherry' which is a song about unrequited love and to this couple in London, they fell in love to this song. The girl in the relationship called me and said she wanted to propose to her girlfriend could you sing 'Apple Cherry' while I do it? I was like 'Really? That's not a love song about getting together'.
NAOI wouldn't want someone assuming that some negative song has some truth between me and my wife. There was a song that one of my buddies sent me, and it was an awesome song. It was about this woman who had fallen in love with a man that wasn't her husband, and I love everything about the song except for the fact that I personally cannot sing it. It would kill me if someone thought I was singing it about my wife.
Aaron WatsonI don't really have a set-in-stone process or formula. Sometimes the melody is there and I have to chase down the lyrics. Sometimes, the song is there and I have to make the melody fit. What I've learned so far about songwriting is that I can't force a song. If I try to do that, it's hollow, and people know a hollow song when they hear it. It's the song they stop listening to and forget about. I'd prefer not to write those kinds of songs.
Kasey AndersonI had a dream that Louis Armstrong was playing the 'Swept Away' melody. I have no idea where it came from. But Louis Armstrong was playing it and singing the song to me. I woke up-it's a borrowed melody no doubt-and wrote it down. If I hear a song and I choose not to put it down, that's me neglecting to accept that song. I think there's a very spiritual and godly-type ting that happens, and it happens to way more people than we know. It's just that very few of us choose to engage it.
Scott AvettWhen you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff. But there's this thing that happens when the song first comes out, that sort of magic when it first comes out of the ether, and you can't even really explain where it comes from. That happens so much with music, and people understand that with music. But I really think that a lot of movie and TV should be the same way.
Trey ParkerThere are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.
Ryan AdamsThe big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
Nick CaveI try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isnt a song that I need to sing.
Valerie JuneIt is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God...The love song is the sound of our endeavors to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.
Nick CaveI really, really enjoy fitting words together - but I only enjoy it when it's easy, when it sort of rolls along by itself. I never erase anything [and] I hardly ever write anything down... The song will be finished before I write it down... I won't write a song unless it serves me in some way, unless I feel I have to write the song to make myself feel better. If you're not overflowing with something, there's nothing to give.
Fiona AppleI'm never sure if I'll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it.
Tracy ChapmanA song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.
Chuck BerryMy philosophy on writing a song for myself is that I always, always, always want to write a song. I always want to write a song. I realize that as a record producer or a singer or whatever I might not, if I recorded on myself or someone else, the first time out I might not give it the right treatment, so that the world or many people will accept it and it'll be a public hit, or anything like that.
Smokey RobinsonI think our songwriting has evolved. We can show that we have continued to branch out and do different stuff and incorporate different instruments. When it comes to writing, I think that we have pushed the envelope. We can do whatever we want to try - a longer song or a shorter song, some different instruments, some piano, an intro with just vocals, something that's scathing. Whatever. However we feel the song should go, that's what we will do. With that mindset, I think it's made us better writers.
John BushI wrote 'Lights' a long, long time ago. And I expected it to be on the album, because it was - I wrote it with 'Biff' Stannard. And he wrote every single Spice Girls song and every single pop song of the 90s, basically. So I thought, you know, I was really lucky to work with him, but I didn't think it would be a big song for some reason.
Ellie GouldingInspiration and stealing are two completely different things. If somebody wants to make a song like "Stairway to Heaven" and writes a song on acoustic guitar, Led Zeppelin does not own every song that's on acoustic guitar for the rest of time.
Robin ThickeTo write a love song that might be able to make it on the radio, that is something that is terrifying to me. But I can definitely write a song about that chair over there. That I can do, but to sit and write a pop song out of the clear blue sky, that is very difficult and I admire the people that can do it.
Barry ManilowA recording of a moment in time, where I was physically there, and it's now in a song for all eternity, in a way. It's really weird. I had written the song, but I'm also physically there in a way I'm physically inside the song, because I've recorded something that's in there.
ShuraYou are hearing this song, and you're 16, and it's a song about love, or a girl. And then maybe there's a girl at school that you like. So you're going to be thinking about that girl. That song is sort of about that girl. The songwriter doesn't know that girl, obviously. He wrote it for something else. But there's the specific meaning with the universal again.
Craig FinnI started playing bass in my friend's band for some reason. It was just something I did because, well, he asked me if I wanted to play bass and he played me this song - Nirvana's version of "Molly's Lips", the Vaselines song - and he said, "You can do this! This is not hard!" and it's like a two-note song. I learned that and then I thought I was a genius.
Jens LekmanBut when I hear a great song, I can't help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.
Taylor SwiftBefore music videos first came out, youโd listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and youโd come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression.
Eddie VedderI always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song.
John PrineMy first favorite band that made music important to me was the Beatles. I was a little kid. I didn't know who was singing what song or who wrote what song.
Chris CornellWriting a song isn't that hard. Writing a good song is difficult. Let's face it, we're faced with taking a complex feeling or event, making words rhyme and saying exactly what we want them to say in a short amount of time. ...the primary reason for keeping it short and to the point is to be certain that you're not boring your audience.
Ann ReedI sing, not to hear the echo repeat, a shade fainter, my song! I think of light and not of glory! Singing is my fashion of waging war and bearing witness. And if my song is the proudest of songs, it is that I sing clearly to make the day rise clear!
Edmond RostandThe first song I wrote was the first song I remember thinking, "Well, maybe I can do something here." The very first one. By the second one I knew I could do something.
Suzanne VegaAnytime you spend six months on a song (Born to Run), there's something not exactly going right. A song should take about three hours.
Steven Van ZandtIf I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - "Well, I'm going to write about a thing.
Charlie DanielsI think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?
Bruce SpringsteenStrangely enough, when the Sugababes' 'Freak Like Me' went to number 1, which was built around my 'Are 'Friends' Electric' song, I had another song called 'Rip' go to number 1 in the Kerrang TV chart, so I was pulling new people in from very different areas of musical interest. That was quite an amazing week.
Gary NumanThe song 'Innocent' is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.
Taylor SwiftI don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.
Renee FlemingI do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that's the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I'm writing. But I'm learning how to play keyboard better now so that'll start serving the song as well; it'll be another flavor. I'm not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah...
Mac DeMarcoTry to take your vision and ego as far away from the song as possible. Give as much respect as you can to the song and the initial inspiration.
M. WardI released that I could crank out a song if I practiced it a lot. If I am in the practice of writing songs everyday or every other day, getting ideas and following through with them, and not just saying "I've got this idea, but I will get to it at some point." If I actually sit down and not be lazy, and follow through with it then you just get in the practice of doing things. It feels very productive, and then it gets a lot easier, because you are working the muscle in your brain. The "song-writing muscle" so to speak.
Ari HestIt was always meant to ease out of a big radio song and flow into the next one. Don't is the bridge song in between Sing and Thinking Out Loud.
Ed SheeranIt's hard enough to make a good song and a good recording of that song. But to try to tailor it to some outside force is just like - It's never been a factor in what I've done or what the band's done.
James Iha...in song the words tend to lose their significance, do often lose it, while at the other extreme, in current prose it is the musical value that tends to disappear - so that verse stands symmetrically, as it were, between song, on the one hand, and prose on the other - and is thus admirably and delicately balanced between the sensual and the intellectual power of language.
Paul ValeryI learned how to be more theatrical and have more fun, and to take a song and sing it over and over again in different ways, and make it different each time. I'm not just singing the song - it's this thing that's affecting me.
Angel OlsenWhen I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.
Juliana HatfieldThe real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines...I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them. And that's not funny....OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire.
Tom LehrerAsh paused as he entered the house to find the three women lined up and... singing to... dear gods, anything but this. "Fergilicious." All he needed was for Simi to be here and off-key with them since it was her favorite song and he'd spent the better part of the last year cursing whoever was dumb enough to introduce that song to a hormonal teenaged demon. Worst part? Simi wanted him to call her Similicious.
Sherrilyn KenyonWhat we do every St. Patty's day, which is wear green and drink a lot of Guinness. And maybe cry a little bit and laugh, and everyone will have to sing a song. That's how every funeral, christening, and wedding ends up in Ireland. Everyone ends up having to sing a song by the end of it.
Saoirse RonanThe reason I've gotten into script-writing, which was accidental to begin with, was that I found it was a far more effective medium for violence. Which is something that I'd always written in songs, but the violence always sat strangely within a song. And I was always interested in the way in which you listen to murder ballads and things like that - these weird lines would kind of come out, like, I drug her by the hair or something - that sat weirdly in the song. Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.
Nick Cave