What I like about music is the songs you can remember the lines of in a single second.
Karl LagerfeldI’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.
Bob DylanAnd if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.
Taylor SwiftI love, love, love just being hands on at all times in the studio.
Ariana GrandeImage, lyrics, content, storytelling, cohesive body of work – that’s Prince to me.
The WeekndLyrics are so important, but they’re really underrated.
Billie EilishIt’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!
Brian EnoWhen I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical – one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.
Margaret AtwoodThe people in my songs are all me.
Bob DylanWhen you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
Dave GrohlIf 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.
Billie EilishIt’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.
EminemTo write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.
F. Scott FitzgeraldWhen I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‚Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.‘
Taylor SwiftAll of my songs are autobiographical.
Taylor SwiftI ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way yall need Jesus.
Kanye WestI have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.
John SteinbeckBob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.
AuroraI write music every day.
Lady GagaI feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.
Billie EilishI’ve got nothing to say most of the time.
David ByrneMaking a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.
George LucasEvery single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.
Taylor SwiftWhen I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.
Lady GagaI have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.
Taylor SwiftSometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.
David BowieI’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.
Taylor SwiftThese 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.
David BowieI just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.
Beyonce KnowlesThe lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.
Brian EnoI think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.
Katharine HepburnI often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.
Taylor SwiftIn Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.
Dwayne JohnsonI grew up writing songs in my room on GarageBand, and I would make the beats just out of layering my vocals over and over again. Very Imogen Heap-inspired.
Ariana GrandeMy production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.
The Weeknd‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘
C. S. LewisIn a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.
David ByrnePeople assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
Brian EnoThere’s nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, ‚Well, okay, I’m going to do something of high artistic worth.‘
Douglas AdamsI think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.
David BowieMy nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.
Dolly PartonThere are alway going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.
Billie EilishThe first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.
Frank OceanIt’s not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, ‚Read,‘ but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, ‚Don’t read, don’t think, just write,‘ and the result could be a mountain of drivel.
Alice MunroMost of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.
Taylor SwiftWhen 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.
Lana Del ReyWhen I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.
Bad BunnyI tried to give the world a bit of creativity, lyrics. And for me, I will always represent music from Puerto Rico, reggaeton, Latin music.
Bad BunnyI used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.
Billie EilishMy lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
Brian EnoI don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.
Clint EastwoodYou can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.
Billie EilishLearning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.
George LucasI always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.
Amy WinehouseI can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.
Dolly PartonA lot of people don’t realise I came out of the Smoky Mountains with a load of songs.
Dolly PartonI really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.
Amy WinehouseI’m a serious aficionada of country music – Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I’ve even written some songs. They haven’t done anything of mine yet. But it’s only a matter of time.
Maya AngelouI have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.
Billie EilishI’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.
Taylor Swift