Patty Griffin
I heard somebody talking recently about the first time they heard the Velvet Underground, and they said, “It’s folk music.” And I went, “Oh my god, it is folk music.” But it’s folk music about heroin. Nobody calls it folk, it just turned into its own thing. It’s better to keep people guessing what it [...]
Todd Rundgren
The style of music may change, but the role of the songwriter is always to encapsulate an idea in either intellectual or emotional terms or both. Essentially what a songwriter is doing is packaging. They’re taking the things that people are talking about and the musical wallpaper, if you will, to life and integrating them [...]
John Prine
I used to think you needed a strong image or something different in there, or something humorous, you know? I never thought about hooks or anything in my songs. But the longer I do it, the more I think you can say the simplest thing that’s been said many times before, and it’s the time [...]
Bill Withers
I feel really lucky, because I get offered record deals now. The funny thing is, right after I did “Just the Two of Us” with Grover [Washington Jr.], I tried to get a record deal and I couldn’t get one (laughs). So now that I don’t care, I get offers! I have a funny phrase. [...]
Sara Bareilles
“I know when a tune is done because it’s that same feeling as knowing you’re on to something when you’re starting a song. There’s that little period of time after a song is done when you want to make tweaks and adjustments. But I’m not very precious about those things, choosing one word over another. [...]
Van Morrison
“There’s no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They’ve got something to lose if they say it’s all poetry; if there’s not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind [...]
Rickie Lee Jones
“Songs are architectural, living, changing aural environments. It’s difficult to disassemble them. Some lines are just a part of your life—you sing them over and over again. But for the most part, the songs that I don’t use don’t get found anywhere. They are rather developers, things that lead to other, better songs, hopefully. But [...]
Ben Harper
“It’s one thing to be a songwriter, but I’m about to go online and have some discussion about artwork. It’s okay that it takes more than songwriting [to be an artist]. That’s a funny thing about living in L.A. and Hollywood. Hollywood loves its accomplished, but it loathes its ambitious. Which I find an odd [...]
Pink
I remember watching Star Search when I was 9 and saying, “God, if I don’t make it this year, I’m done.” They were only cute up until they were 9! I thought, “If I hit 10 next year and I haven’t done any of this shit, my life is over.” At the same time, I [...]
Phil Collins
I remember people saying that was the Peter Gabriel drum sound, but I was the guy who played that stuff on the third album, “Intruder” and all that. It was as much mine, because with that kind of drum sound, you’re composing [sings drum beat from “Intruder”]. That was me, you know? I came up [...]
Bruce Cockburn
When I went to Baghdad I ended up being introduced to this young oud player—an Iraqi guy who’d studied in Egypt. He sang in Arabic, and played really quite beautifully. And then it was my turn, so I pulled out the dobro and just started screwing around thinking that I would sort of work my [...]
Keith Urban
“The most important thing is to keep your tastes as open and diverse as possible. I just think that’s paramount to making new music, because new music is almost always about fusion. It’s about a gumbo that we haven’t tasted before because he added three parts of this and one part of that. Wow, who [...]
Mary J. Blige
Songwriting wasn’t something I learned. I was going through hell and just said, “You know what? I’m gonna put it on paper.” I was in so much pain, I didn’t know what to do with everything that was coming out of me. As I wrote songs like “My Life,” I was crying. I was crying [...]
Alice Cooper
“I get bands that come up to me, and they’ve got all kinds of image. They all look like Good Charlotte. I go, ‘Great image, you look terrific.’ And then I hear the song, and I go, ‘Okay, I get it, you’re angry’ (laughs). I tell them, ‘You’ve got a nice beat and this hook [...]
Richard Thompson
I always felt that there was a point you could reach, and then you couldn’t go any further. You could be a British white interpreter of the blues—and I suppose the pinnacle of that would have been Peter Green, in the ’60s—but then how does someone like Peter Green compare to B.B. King? How does [...]
Jewel
I just heard an old bootleg from around the time I was discovered. I was homeless, singing in a coffee shop, doing five-hour sets of original material. I was so prolific at the time. It’s interesting looking back and asking, “How far has my songwriting come? Where is it going?” I didn’t know any rules [...]
Erykah Badu
Artists have never gotten a fair deal, because the industry was not designed for the artist to be rich. It was designed for us to entertain, and for the labels to prosper, because they had to foot the bill for this “lavish life” that we live. Which is, in all honesty, as much of a [...]
Peter Gabriel
If you have something that’s burning to come out of you, it’ll come out whether you’re on a bus or in a cathedral. But I always say that boredom and fatigue are the two great unrecognized creative challenges—and if the environment’s good, you have a little longer to play before boredom and fatigue show their [...]
Indigo Girls
Amy Ray: I tend to write from a lot of different places, because I don’t like to write more than a few songs about one thing. I get bored easily, so I move around. But I tend to have lifelong things that I touch on. For one record, I kind of—I don’t know—have a short [...]
Carole King
“To create art, there has to be an emotional connection. Making it vulnerable is part of that connection on the part of the artist. If it’s just business, then fine; you can sell a lot of records by making something that’s commercial. But if there’s no emotional connection in it, I don’t think it’s art. [...]
Rick Springfield
I always knew the music was good, I always believed in it and I still do. I think you’re right—I started resenting the fact that a lot of the attention was on the photos. The press started to grab that and go, “Oh, it’s because he’s cute, not because he writes good songs.” A lot [...]
Brian Wilson
This art form can draw out so much emotion and channel it into music. I find it possible to spill beautiful melodies in moments of great despair. A lot of the songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness and pain, or joy, exulataion in nature and sunshine. From Performing Songwriter Issue 18, May/June 1996-RARE
John Hiatt
Before I started having some success as a writer, I had never really been able to separate the songwriter from the performer. I kind of started to get it together with the Riding With the King album. My personal life was still a complete mess. But once I got healthy as an artist, I got [...]
India.Arie
Part of the experience of traveling to Africa reaffirmed for me why I do my music — with the intent to spread love and healing and upliftment and education and all that through music. I formulated a mission statement after the Grammy’s because I was like, “I don’t ever want to forget why I do [...]
