Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It’s an unsightly act.
Experience is definitely the high road once driven. It actually enhances the songwriting and song sourcing process.
I started songwriting at around age 12, and that was it. I never really stopped. Nothing else ever really crossed my mind. It’s truly the expression of who I am.
I think the two are kind of synonymous for me; songwriting is like my form of diary making. It’s how I process the world. Without doing that, I feel kind of lost. The characters that I play often come out in the songs and the challenges that they face, albeit in an abstract way.
Within the songwriting community, there are these unwritten rules for the way that a song should be written in country music, and I think that those rules are constantly being broken over the years, and the molds change and the process is evolving.
You always try different versions of yourself through songwriting. It can get a bit annoying to see them walk around and do their thing when you feel like, ‘I’m not that person any more.’
Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It’s something I don’t feel like I really control.
From singing to acting to songwriting to mom to fashion designer! It’s been quite an evolution.
‘Mr. Misunderstood’ – that whole album is incredible and just has amazing songwriting.
I remember when I started writing lyrics, I was very grand. I tried to use a lot of symbols,because I thought that’s how songwriting should be – with imagery and metaphor. I figured, after a while, maybe I should just write it as I would say in real life.
Songwriting has always been a means to an end for me. That end being a tool to try to understand myself in the world and, through observation, make sense of the world.
I sit down and I write and I make sure that it follows the code of Songwriting Craft 101.
The Zombies were really unique – they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time.
There are no rules when it comes to songwriting, so I’d turn Carter family songs from the 1930s into pop songs.
At 18, I got a publishing deal, so I was like, ‘I can do this for real and not go to college.’ When I was a teenager, my parents dragged me to a lot of songwriting conventions.
I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy.
Songwriting can get pretty heavy and personal for me and I like being able to explore different emotions that are not necessarily my own.
It’s such a weird process, songwriting, because you just have to feel it. There’s no right or wrong melody or lyric.
Great classic music that I’ve been turned on to has not only inspired and influenced me, but it has had an effect on my songwriting.
At first it was my brother’s songwriting and I was just doing what everyone told me.
There’s a lot of personal stuff that can go into songwriting but there’s also a lot of dramatization and fictionalization. You have to do that to make a good song.
Of course, you can’t teach songwriting. You can only encourage people to do it and help them to sort out for themselves what they want to achieve, and get a list of exercises together that improves the craft and gives them more access to the craft of writing good songs.
Bike riding is great for your thinking. I can’t say I’ve written an entire tune while cycling, but riding has definitely inspired songwriting ideas.
It all comes together. It’s – that’s the way it’s always worked for me with songwriting.
I’d say, at the end of the day, you know, from a songwriting practice standpoint, you write songs to make yourself feel something true and validating, and cathartic, maybe, and then whoever responds to it is, like, out of your control.
My songwriting is very personal. The music that influenced me was so impactful that had I grown up somewhere else, I know I would still write the same way I do because of those influences.
The thing about me is that I’m very fortunate to have had the opportunities with Avenged Sevenfold in songwriting. I really think it’s helped to bolster my guitar playing as well.
It’s writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that’s broader than just figuring out a song. You’re also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.
Songwriting for me is about zooming into the canvas, not songwriting in a typical sense.
Songwriting is something that’s very daunting until you have your first successful song, I think.
I’ve been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn’t follow any sort of guideline.
And I look forward to the time when I can become more indulgent with my songwriting. But this band is a family, and it’s a process that we have to grow with together.
I want to see the guitar in a non-linear sense that encompasses tones, arrangements, songwriting, audio production, and everything else – you have to do it all.
I am really heavy into songwriting.
I think I’m better at songwriting now, and it does come easier. I have faith in my initial instincts.
You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul.
I do look at songwriting as a lot of work. I don’t over-intellectualize music as a special medium that only some people deserve to do. I think it’s something you do if you put the work in.
There are albums that I listen to religiously just because I’m such a big fan: any Bruce Springsteen album, or old George Strait albums because the songwriting’s so strong.
Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.
The main way that being adopted has shaped my songwriting is that I was asked at an early age to consider the circumstances that led to my life, and in a way, I was introduced to how fragile and unlikely life is from the beginning.
For my whole career, I’ve been a singer-slash-songwriter, even though I’m very thankfully known for my voice. Songwriting has always been a joy in my life, and to be recognized for it is extremely validating.
Some of my best songwriting choices started as mistakes or learning curves, when I accidentally hit a ‘wrong’ key or something. I try not to lose that the more I learn the how’s and why’s of piano.
I’ve gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I’ve gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.
Songwriting is a give-and-take process, and it can lead to some good, healthy debates.
I’m always trying to find myself little holes where I can do some songwriting.
After a casual listen, it might be easy to lump Rocky Votolato in with the downtrodden likes of Conor Oberst and Elliott Smith. But his songwriting is a bit more triumphant than theirs: Votolato would rather pull himself out of a gutter than wallow in it, focusing instead on the victory before the misery.
My songwriting is personal in the hope that listeners will know that I relate to them.
The classic, quote/unquote, craft of songwriting still works; it still is relevant.
I just love singing, songwriting and touring.
That’s the nice thing about songwriting: You don’t have to punch a clock or be in a specific place to do it. There’s really a lot of freedom to it.
What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That’s why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it.
Anyone who takes the craft of songwriting seriously I radiate towards. Spending time with Daryl Hall was a dream come true. I picked his brain a lot because Hall And Oats is timeless.
I’ve been writing a lot about my encounter with love. Which is the white stag as far as songwriting is concerned because love songs are so banal, and my experience with love is anything but that.
Early in my songwriting career, when I was learning a lot about writing songs, I’d force myself to sit down until I came up with something.
I love songwriting. It’s second to my love for singing in how I express myself.
I had to be honest in my songwriting for it to be where it is, and it’s always scary wondering if anyone will connect with that.
I think for me to be involved in a festival, there has to be a strong element of songwriting and musicianship.
Songwriting is what I am trying to stay good at and get better at.
The key to songwriting is just to be able to observe, and put yourself in situations to be around people, and let those ideas come to you.
Songwriting’s a weird game. I never intended to become one – I fell into this by mistake, and I can’t get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life.
I enjoy recording and performing, but it’s the songwriting that I love most.
I wish I had more confidence. I think that’s probably my Achilles’ heel. If I had more, I probably would have felt emboldened to make more interesting music earlier on, or really go for it in an artistic or songwriting sense.
