When I recorded my solo album, ‘Keep It Hid,’ in 2008, I’d gotten more interested in songwriting, inspired by reading Charles Bukowski and connecting with unfancy, interesting language.
Songwriting is actually a really great outlet. I kind of recommend it. You get to sum up whatever is going on in your life in a song, then perform it really passionately.
From the beginning, my songwriting was from writing in a journal; it was completely unfiltered. I don’t know if I really meant to show everyone this side of me, but when I saw how people resonated to the things I was saying, some of the questions I was asking, I realized I was not alone.
The songwriting community in Nashville really is all about your talent. It’s not about your image, and you have to be humble. You have to be kind. You have to have zero ego when you walk into that writing room.
My songwriting has brought so much to me as an artist and my ability that I have as an artist has brought so much to my songwriting that they live off each other. Without one, the other one dies.
Songwriting itself, I don’t think you can really teach that.
I respect country music because I feel like it’s more about the talent and the songwriting and I put on a big show and we have a lot of stuff, but I feel confident in myself enough as an artist and a singer that I can have all of those fun toys and know that we don’t need all the bells and whistles either.
I have always written poetry but I have never applied it to songwriting.
Where I’ve arrived now is the product of mixing the very straight with the very exploratory; there’s a fine line between the two, although it tends to be getting straighter and straighter because my songwriting is getting better.
In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.
People like me for my songwriting and production, not my singing.
When you’re in a songwriting class, and you write a song, and you hand it in to a teacher to grade, I’m still going to say that it’s a really awesome song whether I got an A or a D. I learned to stick to my guns and take the tools as tools and not as rules.
It would be amazing to write a song that could be sung 100 years from now by a teenage girl and still be relevant to her – that’s a dream of songwriting, maybe.
But especially in America when you’ve got four people in a room and they do a songwriting day, well one of them might literally just come up with one line but they get 25% of the song.
I used to daydream in class about what it’d be like to be a singer. It’s what I wanted to be ever since I was little, but I never knew if it’d happen or not. I was just a normal girl who was doing all the things teenagers do, but on the side, I was attending music camps and going to songwriting sessions.
Songwriting helps me sort out my personal problems. With acting, you’re just a tool for someone’s ideas.
I’m the only girl songwriter that fights for a lot of things. I fight for songwriting fees, which record labels want you to shut up about.
Faith is a really important part of my life and inspires me in all facets of my life, including my songwriting and my singing.
To try and learn how to be a singer, a really good guitar player, a really good pianist, it’s always lagged a bit behind learning to be the best songwriter I could possibly be because songwriting comes naturally to me.
I draw the line at letting people into my songwriting cave. To me, that’s where the alchemy happens and where the mystery is.
I think of the Tycho sound as something separate from the band. I think the methodology and approach to production I use on the Tycho records can be applied to a lot of things. But from a performance and songwriting perspective, yes, Tycho is a live band.
I always was songwriting in high school, writing songs while I was supposed to be listening to the teacher.
I felt I never needed to fight for a more prominent songwriting and increased vocal role with the Cars.
Recovery stabilized me; songwriting gave me a purpose.
You get some confidence in your songwriting abilities and go for the essentials – guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Those are the basic band essentials that have to be in place before you go any further.
If a woman’s aim is to become a singer, I would highly advise her to first develop her craft in songwriting. It’s such a powerful tool to have when you’re a singer.
Songwriting is just like any other kind of writing – it’s either fiction or nonfiction. You can even get into philosophy and politics, which I’ve done on occasion.
My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.
We influence singing but never really songwriting.
Songwriting is such a personal thing and it’s hard to be in a room with somebody you don’t know and trust.
One of the most frustrating parts about songwriting for me is production, but it makes me want to get better at it and ends up being one of the most rewarding parts of it.
Combining sounds that are from another universe with the classic songwriting structures never gets old for me.
That’s what’s amazing about songwriting: you can write a story that everyone connects to.
I found songwriting really hard at first, but after a while it was actually very easy. I wrote about everyday stuff.
The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.
Our third album, ‘Grown.’ On that album, some of us had the opportunity to have hands-on experience into songwriting and production. The project itself taught the members how to create an album ourselves while grabbing guidance from the producers we worked with.
I think some of my previous stuff… I tend to be a bit lazy in songwriting, where I’ll just keep the first thing that comes down, and I won’t go back and revisit stuff.
I don’t really premeditate what I write my songs about; you know, they just kind of happen, and I can’t start writing songs to please a certain group of people or propagate a certain message all the time. That’s just not how my songwriting works – it just sort of comes out, and the songs are what they are.
Chuck is definitely my favorite co-writer, and my best. It is really hard to make yourself vulnerable enough for somebody to get inside your head while songwriting. Chuck and I find writing together very non-competitive and just really easy.
I feel like songwriting, for me, is kind of therapy.
I think you can’t really beat Bob Marley, especially the stuff he was doing with Lee Perry. Just that kind of clubby and dark and crazy stuff, even with the Wailers… Some of the songwriting was phenomenal.
Traditional songwriting, to us, is where the experimental nature comes in. We’re all involved with so much outside activity with really hardcore, experimental music-making.
I’m talented in other places, not only in songwriting, but music is always going to be the backdrop to whatever happens in life.
I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases – I’m addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.
Country music was the music I was brought up on. It’s the music that’s closest to my heart and the music that speaks to me the most, and it’s always been a big influence on my own songwriting.
All of my songwriting success happened within a four month time span, and my record label deal happened within the next three months.
I really love being an artist, but I make my money from songwriting.
Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It’s the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
When it comes to songwriting, I grew up in the Seventies listening to AM radio. So I’ve all these pop songs running through my head from Paul McCartney and Elton John, and a lot of stuff that was written on piano.
I have big dreams. I want to keep songwriting. Direct films. Be a parent.
I’ve been very grateful and humbled by the fact that young people really dig Joy Division’s music. It’s a great testament to the chemistry and the songwriting prowess between the four original members.
My dad helped me understand songwriting because of him playing Babyface a lot. I don’t even know if my dad realized that him just being him, him just living his life, loving what he loved, poured more into me than anybody ever would know.
Being raised Christian and going to church in a small town, that has a lot to do with my makeup as a human being, and has a lot to do with my songwriting, too.
I’ve been in the songwriting circuit as well. I’ve been in a couple writing camps where there are seven top writers or whatever, and they’re writing songs for a young girl or a young guy that are coming up, and they’re kind of nuts.
When we try and blend the two together, the songwriting and the touring like we did before, it doesn’t really work. We tend to become very focused on what we are doing. And we tend to be a little bit one-track-minded.
Songwriting is my craft now, and it’s more than something I just enjoy.
Fear just crushes creativity, and if I let fear into the studio and into the songwriting, I was going to let it kill the artist inside of me.
After writing quite a few songs now, I have not a method but a way of being patient with a couple of verses or a certain set of chords. I can match them up quicker now than I used to. The one thing you do improve is songwriting.
