My brother had written ‚Ocean Eyes,‘ and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way – if you can’t dance to a song, it’s not a song.

Producing all my own songs and refusing to go to the hot producer. That’s the biggest risk I’ve taken so far.

I was probably 7 years old when I started playing the guitar and writing some serious songs.

I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.

We’re making the music that the people are asking us for.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

I made that first record in 2008, alongside the EP, but my label at the time waited three years to release it. They thought maybe someone bigger would buy it, but they didn’t, so in the end they just released it themselves.

It’s a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that’s a good thing.

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

A lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

A producer gets the whole vision done from top to bottom, to making the record to having the record delivered to the world. That’s a producer.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

My songs are like my children – I expect them to support me when I’m old.

No one sells a song better than the person that wrote it.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

I want to produce the music to a movie that I’m working on, like what Prince did with ‚Purple Rain.‘

I put together amazing records, whether that’s finding the beat or putting the right hook on there, and picking the right artists on the record. That’s me being an A&R. And I’m making sure that they give me their best.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

For some reason, I’m really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

When I first started making ambient music, I was setting up systems using synthesizers that generated pulses more or less randomly. The end result is a kind of music that continuously changes. Of course, until computers came along, all I could actually present of that work was a piece of its output.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

There are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.

I don’t think a song should be put in a category.

We uploaded ‚Ocean Eyes‘ to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

With recording, everything changed. The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one’s furniture. It’s an idea that many composers have felt reluctant about because it seemed to them to diminish the importance of music.

When I’m making music, I can hear all the parts, all the instruments. I can hear what it should be.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

When my record comes on, you know that’s a DJ Khaled record. That’s my formula, and the people love it.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.

I knew the second I finished the first record – ‚House Of Balloons‘ – and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

I think sometimes – not always – I write songs that are accessible.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

Getting a great idea with song writing is a lot like love. You don’t know why this one is different, but it is. You don’t know why this one is better, but it is. It sticks in your head, and you can’t stop thinking about it.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.