Top 300 Songwriter Quotes

I’m a songwriter who’s put my childhood memories and teenage angst into songs.

I want to be a producer and not a songwriter.

I’ve retreated to what I was originally, which is an individual songwriter.

For me, as a performer or a songwriter, Stevie Nicks is always a huge inspiration as well as Iggy Pop.

Drake is a lyrical genius, and he’s great with melodies, and Pharrell is an amazing producer and songwriter.

Labrinth is a super talented singer, producer, songwriter from London.

As a songwriter, you always want to search for something that’s right in front of you that you can twist into something new.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I’ve always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

I hated the thought of being just a songwriter.

Being a songwriter does not rely on an audience or other band members or a camera. I can just sit in a room and write songs.

I never look for music by genre. I look for an artist who puts a dependable trademark on things. Like Elvis Costello – he’s a great songwriter who presents his songs in a number of contexts. I feel the same about my own music.

I probably wouldn’t be a songwriter if I didn’t grow up the way I did. It was difficult and it was at times very scary to grow up in a household so unsettled and at times very violent. But, it also, I guess it earned me a sort of wisdom at a young age that’s served me well.

That’s a lonely place when you think that nobody wants to work with you, but in reality, what it is is they’re just wanting to see you get good enough to get a publishing deal or to be a professional songwriter.

Almost every band has somebody who’s the main songwriter and who has a vision, a very clear idea of how a song should be.

I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world, but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.

I’m not an author, but as a songwriter, I’m afforded this kind of luxurious ambiguity in songs of being able to confess the secrets of my relationships with people and face basically no consequences, or ask for no approval or permission.

Being in a boy ban,d you’re not allowed to be good at anything. You’re not allowed to be talented. You’re not really allowed to be a songwriter. You’re not allowed to be that good a singer.

My wife is cool enough to let me write about personal things, to be a songwriter exploring the shadowy sides of love.

With Prince especially… he was a really great songwriter and keyboardist and singer and was so good at so many different things, you couldn’t pin him down. That really inspires me.

I’ve always been around musicians and always been the songwriter who doesn’t end up playing the music.

I always wanted to be in this role, as a songwriter. In the Pumpkins, it was always impossible because Corgan would wake up and write five songs. He was so prolific, there wasn’t a lot of room for anyone else.

I consider myself a songwriter before anything else. The fact that I have been able to write both of my records and establishing myself as a songwriter is super-important to me. Some people have that gift, where they can take on anything and make people believe it. I like to do a song from personal experience.

I’m a songwriter, an artist, and a musician. I do not have to try to be that; I just am.

I think artists are aware that talking gives a songwriter so much material. If they just tell us what’s happening, it’s so much easier for us to write a song that’s specific to them.

I guess if I’d have more of a producer attitude, maybe I’d sell more records. But I’m basically a songwriter.

I’m a songwriter first.

Freddie was very much able to ride the neutral wave. We all respected his views because he was such a great songwriter. It was his idea that we share all the credits. It was decided all the songs would be attributed equally to Queen. That immediately got rid of the arguments. That was a fantastic, democratic notion.

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.

As a songwriter or artist, there’s only so many ways you can say, ‘I love you’ or ‘I think you’re beautiful.’

I think everyone mentions Bob Dylan, but he’s someone I just admire so much as a songwriter. I think people write songs, and then there’s Bob Dylan songs. He’s one step ahead of just everybody else.

As a songwriter, I’ve always loved to tell stories. But in my band, it was always about what would make sense for a band to put out.

I’ve spent most of my life playing with Tom Petty, and he’s a damn good songwriter.

If I had to drop everything and just be a songwriter, I would be OK with that because that’s the real joy.

We can’t see ourselves very clearly. This I learned as a songwriter. I’m forever trying to figure out what my own truth is.

Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that’s fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.

I had no idea I was gonna be a songwriter, because I was too young to know my own evolution. I started playing the violin as a way to express myself because I didn’t have a lot of vocabulary when I was 14.

You get a letter from her agency embracing you into the family that says, ‘It is our goal now to help you achieve your dream of being a songwriter, in John’s memory.’

Being sent away to boarding school at seven is as great an inspiration as any songwriter could have – to be taken away from one’s family and locked away for 10 years. It does create an incredible intensity of emotion.

Richie Kotzen is such an unbelievable talent as a vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter.

That’s one of the problems in being a songwriter and living a long time. What you eventually end up doing is you start imitating yourself.

I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be a songwriter. I thought I had to be a really intelligent lyricist, like a poet.

Record companies worrying more about market share than developing artists – I hear there was a time when if your first record didn’t sell 8m copies, you were still given a chance to grow as a songwriter.

I think that every songwriter would give their right arm to come up with a standard that is going to be played long after they’re dead.

I was a staff songwriter for Combine Music Publishing in Nashville for seven years. I’d sit around with a groups of friends with a Yamaha piano and a tape recorder and crank out songs.

I think the biggest thing, for me, was just to be recognized as a songwriter.

I was mainly a songwriter; I really wasn’t much of a performer.

I’m a songwriter, principally, and I was real excited that people liked my songs, but you get a bit of an ego about it.

I was the Specials’ founder, main songwriter and keyboard player.

I don’t have to compete in the charts. I can just be myself as a musician, a songwriter and play with the musicians that I really love.

For me as a songwriter, I love when other people cover my songs.

As a songwriter, I listen to everything to be inspired… from Rihanna to Bruno Mars to Springsteen to Johnny Cash.

I’m still learning a lot as a songwriter. I try to write down and make a note of ideas that I cross paths with on a day-to-day basis, whether it be a conversation or something I hear on the radio, seeing a movie, or just thoughts in my head as I’m walking down the street.

What formed me as a musician, a songwriter, the sound and personality of my band, a whole lot of that happened well before 1991.

I’m more of a songwriter. I love writing songs. I love writing my songs. It’s always been writing for me, and it makes it different when you’re writing for yourself.

I’m a songwriter, my love of music has never left me and I literally don’t seem to be able to stop writing songs, they keep coming.

As a songwriter, it can be a kiss of death for you to fall in love.

I always loved singing, but I thought it was like drawing – just something you do in your own little corner to calm yourself down. But when my friend, the French songwriter Etienne Daho, listened to my songs, he was so moved that told me that I had to do a demo, share them with the world.

I’m trying to break away from doing covers or from being considered only as a YouTube star. I’m a singer, songwriter, sound engineer, and producer.

I think of myself as someone who’s trying to be a great songwriter and a great performer. And I mean really great.

I don’t think I’m a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it’s in my fabric.

I have a lot of memos in my phone of songs; I’ve had dreams about a melody. It’s always melody first as far as when stuff like that happens – I find that my melodic sense is my strongest asset as a songwriter.

As a solo artist, it’s so easy to be lumped into a singer / songwriter genre and writing sleepy, sad songs that are very emotionally rich that mean a lot to you, and people just get kind of tired.