I like working with other people but I’m not a songwriter, I’m a producer.
I was a very romantic, overly dramatic young lady, which served me well as a songwriter. Especially as someone who had to focus on lyrics and melody, because if you’re a dramatic and romantic person, lyrics come easy, and you turn every single short-term relationship into the biggest ‘Romeo-and-Juliet’ story ever.
Someone like Katy Perry – I like her writing because I listen to music as a songwriter. I like a lot of her songs – like, ‘Firework’ is a song that I think I could write.
One of the most important things to me as a songwriter is to make music that’s young and fresh but also soulful and real. I want people to feel like they know me once they listen to my songs.
I definitely always thought of myself as a songwriter before a singer.
I’m a songwriter, and I understand artistic licence. We can embellish, go on little journeys and explore our inner selves. It can be quite self-indulgent.
I don’t think any songwriter who comes up through playing clubs can really claim to have independently developed their art. All along the way so much information is coming, the writer inside the performer unconsciously reacts to all of that. By the time they get to be thirty, the writer is gone.
Just like any songwriter, the songs come out of where I am in my life and what I’m doing and who I’m hanging out with and the kind of sounds I’m imagining. I always loved the idea of it evolving in the same way that life changes.
I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around.
You know that first love that leaves you? You never forget that, especially if you’re a songwriter. I must have gotten nine songs out of that girl.
I try to do collaborations with as many artists as possible. It’s really excellent and fun to actually work with another songwriter.
To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true… I’ve never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.
As a songwriter, oddly enough, my influences were people like Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and Buddy Holly. Some psychedelic stuff, too.
50 Cent’s a songwriter. He understood and liked my music, but he didn’t understand me.
You always have to work to become a better singer, songwriter and performer.
I always was really confident about myself, about my voice, myself as a person, my body, all of those things, but as a songwriter – I just didn’t identify as a songwriter at all.
I consider myself a songwriter… I guess the business end is my songs and the fun part is playing the guitar.
Several years ago, I was asked by a songwriter’s association to go to Nashville – I think it involved some kind of award – and be part of the showcase. It was myself and Stevie Winwood and Michael McDonald and then some country people that I didn’t know. The whole community was just so welcoming to me.
I always wanted to be known as a songwriter and not just a songbird.
I just don’t see myself as a songwriter or a country singer or any of those things anymore. It’s more trying to express ideas and emotional textures.
As a songwriter, it’s good to have criticism, and I like objective opinions.
There’s two things that are tough when you’re trying to be a songwriter: Number one is, how do I write a great song? The second thing is, how do I write a great song that’s right for me?
One of the greatest tools you have as a songwriter is anonymity. If someone knows too much about the songwriter, they don’t get to insert their own characters. I don’t want the audience thinking about the gay guy who wrote the song.
I saw Damien Rice in Dublin when I was 13, and that inspired me to want to pursue being a songwriter… I practised relentlessly and started recording my own EPs. At 16, I moved to London and played any gigs I could, selling CDs from my rucksack to fund recording the next, and it snowballed from there.
Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else’s house!
A lot of people are coming down on people taking old rock ‘n’ roll songs and making commercials out of them, but from a songwriter’s standpoint, I don’t mind because it helps pay my rent.
I’m a songwriter, and I’m more than just a screamer.
I’m a songwriter, that’s what I love.
I like Chris Martin. I think he’s a really great songwriter.
I’d like to eventually be known as someone who emerged as a songwriter.
I love Darius Rucker. He’s a true artist, a great songwriter who can play his instrument, sing and write about his life.
My father was a cocky, long-haired musician, a songwriter.
That little Miley Cyrus… she’s like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she’s Hannah Montana, but what people don’t realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she’s 40 years old!
I’m a songwriter who just wants to bring people great songs.
It should be if you’re a good singer and a good songwriter, you should have your spot. You get everybody trying to release the prettiest guy, but that doesn’t mean they’re the best artist. Most of the time the true artists are just normal old dudes.
As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.
One quality of a good songwriter is to be vague. A vague notion, a vague image, but enough to give the listener the opportunity to make more out of what’s being said than is there. That’s the great thing about Bob Dylan’s songs: We the listeners have made more out of them than he ever intended.
I’m a singer, songwriter from Mexico.
As a songwriter, it’s very hard to listen to music that’s not coming from the heart and soul, personally.
My number-one goal is to never feel like I’m strictly defining myself. The minute I feel like I’m doing that as anything – as theatrical, as feminist, as songwriter – I feel like the minute I name it, I’m stuck in a box.
Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.
As a songwriter, I’m not necessarily writing about myself or my life.
I’m a songwriter, actually. And when I say I’m a songwriter, I’m saying I can write songs for more than just myself.
What Autotune allows is for people like myself and Kanye West not to depend on the singer. Back in the Fifties, the songwriter was rendered invisible. Now the songwriter is there in the forefront.
My main goal as a songwriter is to make something that inspires people. To write things about my life that people can relate to. Whether it’s a whole record or just one song for someone, I hope it can do that for them. Knowing that I have the ability to do that is inspiring to me.
When we were doing ‘Live at Benaroya,’ the song ‘I Will’ was hard to get through. I’ve always get a big lump in my throat when I sing that song. And also ‘Before It Breaks.’ So I’m just a different songwriter now. And the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to deliver those songs casually.
Once I’d become a songwriter, it just stays with you. You always want to write more songs because it’s such a great feeling.
I thought I was just going to be a songwriter for other people! And now I get to put out my own music, which is amazing.
I didn’t mean to be a songwriter; I just was writing for fun, you have all day to do it. I was homeless so that’s all I had to do.
Most of my songs are inspired by both falling in love and heartache. And it was a turning point for me as a singer and songwriter as it dawned on me that I wasn’t being honest enough about what I truly feel.
I never thought of myself as a songwriter. I was just an artist writing songs, and they just happened to get placed.
I was inspired to make music since I was 7 because my aunt is a songwriter.
Pakistan never valued Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan saab until English songwriter Peter Gabriel started collaborating with him. After that, the country suddenly realised that they have an amazing talent. This is the story of a lot of artistes there.
Meeting my wife changed everything; it really, in the long run, made me a much better artist, a much better songwriter, a much better maker of albums.
I always like to write the songs, and they get turned loose into the world, and who knows what happens to them. That’s the joy of being a songwriter. You get to hear what other people do, interpretation-wise.
What made me a comedian was that I wasn’t really a songwriter, I was more of a poet.
I’ve known the glory of the stage and the glory of the spotlight. I still crave it. I want to be on ‘American Bandstand’ and ‘Soul Train’ as a solo artist. As a producer, songwriter and arranger, I help other artists say what they want to say. But on my records, I say what I want to say.
No. 1, I’m a songwriter, and I don’t really get out and tour.
That’s the challenge as a songwriter is that there’s only so many things people want to hear about, and relationships is just one of those things.
I just wanted to be a songwriter. I did really not like the sound of my own voice.
I’m no songwriter because all of my popular songs have just been outgrowths of themes for the various pictures.
