Songwriting Quotes

“Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.”
― Frank Harte

“so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...

So ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Authors can write stories without people assuming that they are autobiographies, but songwriters and poets are often considered to be the characters in their works. I like Michelangelo's vision, 'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.”
― Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty

“Songwriting is a bitch. And then it has puppies”
― Steven Tyler

“Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“If I knew what to do
I'd do more than write a song for you”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“I tried to look at writing a song almost like solving a mystery. The song was there, buried somewhere in my brain. All I had to do was follow the clues until I figured it out.”
― Jon Skovron, Struts & Frets

“[A]s soon as you try and take a song from your mind into piano and voice and into the real world, something gets lost and it's like a moment where, in that moment you forget how it was and it's this new way. And then when you make a record, even those ideas that you had, then those get all turned and changed. So in the end, I think, it just becomes it's own thing and really I think a song could be recorded a million different ways and so what my records are, it just happened like that, but it's not like, this is how I planned it from the very beginning because I have no idea, I can't remember.”
― Regina Spektor

“I hereby grant you permission to write crap. The more the better. Remember, crap makes the best fertilizer.”
― Pat Pattison

“Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“Unless the object of the singer’s affection is a vampire, surely what Hart means is unphotogenic. Only vampires are unphotographable, but affectionate ‘-enic’ rhymes are hard to come by.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1954-1981, With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines, and Anecdotes

“Of course Tucker Crowe was in pain when he made [the record], but he couldn't just march into a recording studio and start howling. He'd have sounded mad and pathetic. He had to calm the rage, tame it and shape it so that it could be contained in the tight-fitting songs. Then he had to dress it up so that it sounded more like itself.”
― Nick Hornby, Juliet, Naked

“By combining certain elements of technique which ignite each other I could shit the levels of perception, time-frame structures and systems of rythm which would give my songs a brighter countenance, call them up from the grave [...] It was like parts of my psyche were being communicated to by angels. There was a big fire in the fireplace and the wind was making it roar.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“A steampunk nation
Baby pollution rises up then the loving comes arraigning 'cause
Our art's official and only partially artificial
And our heart's in the middle of sharp hardened shards of metal but
There's not where it settles
Because it's beating to the steaming of God's hottest pot or kettle

And now we face it, this creation we made to
To save our craving for a synthetic rebelnation it's
Our safeway they make into a pathetic revelation
In our steampunk nation
Our steampunk nation”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Songs are like women or cats — fascinating, elusive, seductive, irresistible, infuriating, moody, demanding and contradictory creatures. The writer pursues them like some phantom fantasy — fascinated, intrigued and desperate to find out what they’re really like. They should be approached with caution and respect — especially at night. The more promising and beautiful they appear, the harder they may be to catch.”
― Leslie Bricusse

“You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.”
― Joni Mitchell

“To write a blues song
is to regiment riots
and pluck gems from graves.”
― Etheridge Knight, The Essential Etheridge Knight

“Crafting a song is a spell in itself.”
― Jessica Marie Baumgartner, The Magic of Trees

“I hope that one day, I can again believe in you and sing a song for you while holding you in my arms near the terraced rice fields that glow golden in the late afternoon light.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“A tawdry realm of shifting, insecure employment and fleeting glimpses of high reward for little effort. A world where strings are pulled by complete cretins while those who work hard at the creative coalface are at the bottom of a steaming dunghill of vacuity, broken dreams, and empty promises.”
― Kevin Armstrong, Absolute Beginner: Memoirs of the world's best least-known guitarist

“SUNO is one of the best AI music apps that I have come across. It takes my lyrics and turns them into a song, which I would never be able to do myself.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“God channels this through me at night. [...] if I’m not there to receive these ideas, God might give them to Prince”
― Michael Jackson

“Developing a large vocabulary of chords and scales will make your playing more sophisticated, but do remember - you cannot memorize a dictionary and then become a poet. To make real, red blooded music, you must develop personality and taste too.”
― Shikhar Gupta, Guitar Chords, Scales & Arpeggios: The Complete Visual Guide for Modern Players

“Writing a good song is not mimicry, replication, or pastiche; it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what they recognize as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, peril, and smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden, shocking discovery. It is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes their own blood, struggle, and suffering in the inner workings of the song.”
― John Warner, More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI