I dropped the ‘Bundy’ with my country music because I wanted it to be two separate things: There’s me as a songwriter and a country singer, and there’s me as a Broadway performer.
I didn’t want to repeat my mistakes so I stopped, took some time out and started having therapy. My songs were bringing up feelings inside of me I didn’t really understand, so I wanted to understand where they were coming from to help me be a better person and a better songwriter.
I’m a very emotional singer and songwriter.
I’ve had the great luxury in my career to be so successful as a songwriter that I didn’t have the desperate need to have material to tour behind. It took a lot of pressure off me.
I might find out about a songwriter and start following them on Instagram. Within a day, we might be hanging out and feeling out whether we can work together.
I think part of my job as a songwriter is to go back in my memory and pull up those pains for other people because somebody else is going to come along who didn’t have a good issue with their father.
Rap ain’t out there for everybody; everybody can’t be a rapper. Everybody can’t be a singer; anybody can’t just be a songwriter, but it may – there’s some profession out there you can be in.
I appreciate a songwriter like Morrissey with so much restraint.
I’m an around-the-way girl. I’m a singer, songwriter. I’m about positivity and spreading a good message and telling the people’s story.
With pretty much everything that I’ve done, in terms of going from being a songwriter and producer for other artists to doing my stuff, all the songs that I’ve kept to myself have always been me writing about my life.
I was raised by my father, who was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and bass player. His brothers all did the same thing, so I was kind of always raised around the music.
I became a singer and a songwriter by learning on the spot, so think I always need to be slightly out of my comfort zone when I do something. I’ve never stopped being experimental because that’s how I started.
I moved to L.A. when I was, like, 6 months old. I was born in Georgia ’cause my dad was going to college at the University of Georgia for music. Then we moved to the Valley, and my dad was a songwriter out here.
I’m a songwriter; it’s in my nature to express things openly.
Growing up as a singer, and a cast member, and now as an adult, a songwriter, I get the luxury of choosing the kinds of songs that I want to sing, because I’ll write, you know, hundreds of songs. Even though only 12 appear on the album. That’s 12 that I’ve chosen to sing of my catalog.
I don’t think I’m a good-enough songwriter.
Put me in a room with a songwriter, and I just clam up. I get shy.
I’m a recording studio guy, an engineer, a songwriter and a guitar player, in that order.
I’m always looking for great songs, and not being much of a songwriter, I depend on great songwriters to send them to me. I go through tons of stuff, and sometimes you just find material that kind of fits and becomes something special.
Writing for somebody else is really fun ’cause I consider myself a songwriter first and foremost.
My father was an aspiring country singer and songwriter. He just didn’t get that off that ground. I was afraid, very tentative to do anything with music for years. I didn’t tell him I was playing in bands when I was away from home, because it had been such an unpleasant experience and a letdown for him.
Sometimes when you’re a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don’t care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.
I swear I pick up little gems from every artist that I work with. That’s why I’m so appreciative that I’ve been able to be a songwriter first.
I feel like I needed to grow up. I needed to grow up as a songwriter. I needed to grow up as a singer, a performer. I needed to grow up as a woman.
When I am not working, I go to the movies, text my friends, my thumbs are faster than lightening on that keyboard!, write songs, sing, dance, Facebook, Twitter and spend time with my besties. I am also a songwriter and I love to write about my life experiences.
For me, Paul Simon has always been an incredible songwriter, as he writes very complicated songs that sound very simple, and he makes it look so easy when it’s not.
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could.
I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.
I’m not a virtuoso on an instrument. You know, I’m not always singing in pitch. I laugh sometimes my way through the shows, but I’m an honest songwriter who’s always tried to bring the audience with me on my journey in hopes that they see their own lives reflected in the work.
My father was a songwriter and he had a studio, and I was always surrounded by musicians and people creating music. I think I just always believed that that was a normal job, and people waking up at lunchtime and working until late at night, that to me always just was quite a normal job.
I’ve always been a songwriter.
A songwriter should have friends who are similarly interested; should move about in the milieu of work he has chosen for himself.
Some people ask me what instruments I play, but usually I’ll just say I’m more of a producer or a composer or songwriter – those are my strongest suits: arranging and composing.
I am songwriter. I do compose the music of songs that I write in Bengali. But I’ve never thought of composing for a film. That’s a different art altogether.
It’s cool that our stuff is received as it is, and our stuff is fairly long. But from a songwriter’s purview as well as an exercise, I’m trying to write shorter material and find ways to condense ideas.
I love the idea of how fast can we make the song, but I don’t think that I’m necessarily, like, a super-talented songwriter. I think I’m just really productive. One out of 10 songs is a hit.
I’ve always said that Guy Clark is a regional songwriter without being regional. He’s global. His craft is like, well, Larry McMurtry would be an example. I kind of see Guy Clark and Larry McMurtry in the same wave.
It’s much easier to work on other people’s music and play in other people’s bands as a guitar player instead of being the main songwriter and singer. That’s a really big job to do that.
I’m a songwriter. I need silence to hear the melodies, so I don’t fill the days with a lot of sound.
I see myself as a songwriter and a poet.
Undeniably, I’m a country singer; I’m a country songwriter. But I feel like I make country music for people who like country music and for people who don’t.
I could never have dreamed of picking up an Ivor Novello for anything… but for Songwriter Of The Year, it’s just amazing.
My main theme as a songwriter seems to be a feeling of homelessness, of being in motion. The feeling of being somehow unmoored, a radical internal freedom that is very painful and also joyful.
Me becoming a person, instead of somebody who just hides and is afraid, has happened in tandem with me learning to write music and become a good songwriter.
I don’t want to live in an ivory tower, being the songwriter who just turns inward.
People say, ‘How does having kids change your writing? Do you see the world through their eyes?’ No – you just become a faster songwriter… In the old days, you’d be like, ‘Oh I’m gonna work on this song for a few days.’
I think if you’re a good songwriter, that’s what you are first – not a star or celebrity.
I was a coat-checker at Orso, and all these wonderful actors were coming in, and it was exciting to me, so I started going to classes, and my excuse was, ‘I’ll be a better songwriter if I can understand how to play a character.’ Well, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
‘My Church’ – that was really the tipping point of me going from songwriter to artist.
Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won’t bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.
It’s the meanest thing to abuse your power as a songwriter. To write pointedly about someone… it’s kind of unfair to use them. They can’t answer you or have a rebuttal.
As I’ve matured as a songwriter, I realize that if it’s out there, it’s mine.
I’ve learned and grown as a songwriter.
There are certain choices you make as a songwriter, based on vowel sounds and melody and chord changes.
I would love to work with Paolo Nutini because he is so soulful and an amazing songwriter.
I think we achieved what we wanted to achieve. It was a short time period but we had broken America, we had been a worldwide success, and certainly George, as a songwriter, was outgrowing Wham!
The Bee Gees were always heavily influenced by black music. As a songwriter, it’s never been difficult to pick up on the changing styles of music out there, and soul has always been my favourite genre.
There’s so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it’s reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She’s been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there.
My little boy, West, and my wife, they’re my rock and that’s the thing that keeps driving me to do better at what I do professionally. There was a time in my career where I had been on this huge roller coaster ride and I’d really got in the spot where I could’ve hung up it and just been a songwriter.
