One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.
I’m not really going to defend anyone’s lyrics.
When I first started making music, I wrote the lyrics first, but now, because the music has got kind of wilder, I’ve flipped it.
I came to the Unites States and realised I had a knack for coming up with rhymes and lyrics.
I’m not a big fan of Robert Plant’s lyrics or his singing.
My second record I used a producer, which was frustrating in a way, because I think a lot of the punky spirit and provocative nature of the lyrics didn’t come across – the music was pretty.
Every writer writes in different ways, and so some write the music first, while others write the lyrics first, and some write while they are doing other things, and it is just nice to see how other writers are writing.
My lyrics are my diary – you’re hearing every detail of my life.
I don’t really care about a song or lyrics; I’m really just interested in the way people emphasize words. That’s what makes a strong impact on me.
I don’t work with anybody on the music, of course. But my God, some of the lyrics that other people have written were so shallow: ‘Hey baby this, hey baby that.’ I need substance to the words, you know? Give me depth!
I came from battling, knowing about the lyrics. All that’s cool, but if you want people to love you, you have to talk to them about what they go through.
Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can’t rescue a dog of a song.
Lyrics are my racket; music is play – the fluff stuff.
I still know the lyrics to pretty much any ‘Mary Poppins’ song.
I remember writing lyrics for ‘Take Me to Church’ for a long time before I even had a song in mind for. It’s not that I was trying to write that song for a year, but sometimes you just kind of collect lyrical and musical ideas and don’t actually complete the song until you feel like they work together and have a home.
The words that I’m most happy with are the ones that come from my subconscious rather than my conscious. They just feel right. I think that’s the same with music, really. If you’re doing an album, there’s ten or eleven sets of lyrics, so you get to the point of inspiration ten or eleven times – it’s difficult.
I can’t do one thing at a time. If I’m writing song lyrics, I’ve got to be doing the ironing or cooking or something while I’m working. If I just sit there and stare at the walls, I get nothing.
Hip hop scholarship must strive to reflect the form it interrogates, offering the same features as the best hip hop: seductive rhythms, throbbing beats, intelligent lyrics, soulful samples, and a sense of joy that is never exhausted in one sitting.
I find it really easy to write on the bass, because you kind of get straight to the point: you do lyrics and melody without thinking about decorating the song until after you’ve finished it.
I think it was T.S. Eliot who talked about good poetry being felt before it’s understood. I believe that. There are some bands where I love their lyrics but I don’t have a clue what they’re on about.
I stay true to my lyrics. If I go back and look at them in hindsight, the emotions I had when I wrote them have passed. It feels unjustified to change them.
It’s hard to talk about childhood trauma. It’s hard to talk about depression. It’s hard to talk about anxiety. And we thought – I wonder if we just open up our subconscious and the things that we think about and hide from people every day and just let them come out in some of these lyrics.
If I had something to say about my lyrics, I would say they were about different subjects concerning the darkness and the night.
I’ve been able to carve my way out with lyrics and melodies.
I was babysitting the night High School Musical premiered last year. I watched with the kids and we sang along to the lyrics. I was making $12 an hour.
I have Bob Dylan lyrics on my ribs. I’m a diehard Dylan fan, and my dad and I joke that if I ever met him, I’d have him sign his name right under my tattoo and then I’d run to the parlor to get his signature tattooed.
So one can say that I write all the time, that goes for the lyrics as well.
My music and my lyrics are essentially emotional postcards.
I was listening to all those lyrics and trying to take in everything that was happening. I was completely excited. It was one of the greatest times that I had listening to music.
People used to talk about my lyrical content and not about my music, and to be honest, I think I have got lazy with my lyrics over the years.
The lyrics are the essential part in our songs.
The Kesha Lyrics to hit song ‘Tik Tok’ are a cry for help.
I’m very passionate about music and was excited to see that the majority of readers loved the inclusion of lyrics.
In fact, many rock critics look askance at explicitly political lyrics, which I think is pretty stupid, without denying that some political lyrics are also pretty stupid.
The way we write our solo songs is that we take the emotions that we feel and put them in the lyrics. And we try to put them in the songs.
All musicians should write poetry or at least read it if they want to improve their game. Except for people who believe lyrics don’t matter.
I will concentrate on playing guitar, on lyrics and on singing. I am a part of things; I am not the encompassing ‘Smog.’
I missed being onstage behind the microphone. After a while, it was hard to hear another voice singing my lyrics.
I want to be on the Billboard Hot 100 with a single that has Korean lyrics.
I don’t think any of our lyrics have ever been erotic in a sexual term, because I haven’t really written, touched on, that subject too often. But, uh… I mean, I suppose they could point the finger at us for violence maybe in certain songs.
One of the lyrics from Bono that always sticks with me is ‘Where the Streets Have No Name.’ Just the name of the song, that sort of oneness, and there isn’t any division in yourself, and your just at peace and fired up at the same time.
Lyrics can’t do what they do – or should do – when you’re creating a musical with rock lyrics. There’s plenty of room for rock musicals, just not all rock musicals.
I feel like there’s a lot of albums that are like ‘woo! we’re young, let’s have fun’ and there’s a lot of albums that are abstract, with mature lyrics.
I don’t really listen to the radio anymore, but some of the more contemporary people I like are Stereolab, Spiritualize, Yo La Tengo and Bedhead. There are other things too, like Pavement. They’re a great band, with really good lyrics. But generally, I’m not overwhelmed by the state of indie-rock.
To do a musical takes a tremendous amount of energy because you have to act and sing at the same time. And everything has to be precise. Because you can’t forget the lyrics because the band keeps playing, you know, and you’re under a certain amount of pressure.
I say funny stuff in my lyrics to make people laugh, but it’s all in the seriousness of the music. I’m just being witty.
I was MCing in the playground, spitting lyrics over mobile phones – Sony Ericsson, Walkmans, W810s, the Teardrop Nokia phones, all of that. Vital equipment! I never even had a DJ set where a DJ’s playing vinyl, and I’m spitting.
I wanna be able to stand on the stage and hold out the mic and people sing all the lyrics to my song.
I always start with writing vocal melodies before writing lyrics.
Being able to play all over the world to different audiences and have them sing my lyrics back to me, even if they can’t speak the same language, is crazy.
I think, for myself, as an artist, the progression is a lyrical progression and what I choose to target my lyrics at and how I construct the rhymes.
The thing I admired most about Scott was his fearlessness. Of course his voice, lyrics, and stage presence have always had an effect on me as they have most STP fans. But it was his fearlessness that I admired the most.
I love Tom Waits because he’s an artist who makes me not afraid to get old, and that’s rare. I think it’s a rare kind of thing to have that level of wisdom. And his lyrics are just astounding; everything in life is inside his lyrics.
I have to have a guitar sitting around. I sing in the shower. I sing around the house. The music comes secondary. The lyrics come first.
‘In My Hands,’ the title track, is my very first vocal attempt, and I’m not a singer as such. But I’ve always wanted to express myself vocally on my albums, and I don’t really have much of a capability for singing. The strength is in, I think, the lyrics and just speaking. It just comes from inside.
That’s something – you laugh about Eminem… It’s funny, man, because I didn’t like him when he first came out, ya know. It seemed like a big joke. But I think the guy’s for real, and I like his lyrics!
Actually, what I did, because I couldn’t make sense of it, and I have to have lyrics that make sense, I decided the best way to sing ‘I Have Confidence’ was to go completely nuts with panic and fear.
I really hate when I do a great song with great lyrics but my voice just don’t fit because of the type of beat I picked.
I started writing songs before I could talk – at three or four. It was in me, and I had to get it out. It was all freestyle, which is how I write anyway. I don’t write the words down; I scat and come up with the melody, then the lyrics.
