We have quite a few political songs: ‘Channel Z,’ let’s ‘Keep This Party Going’ on. Our lyrics aren’t too hit-you-over-the-head, but they have political undertones. We’re active politically.
I like clever lyrics, funny lyrics, dumb lyrics. I can never put my finger on what I like about them.
But I always loved songs with great lyrics.
For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.
If I look at my old lyrics, they seem to be full of rage, but empty. There was an emptiness in my life.
I would love to collaborate with Chance the Rapper. I love his lyrics and his sound and everything.
I never wanted to write really cheesy pop lyrics – like, ‘baby, baby, the sun is shining’ – that’s not something that interests me personally. I’m always wanting to write something that has some kind of meaning.
When I first started making music, I was pretty drawn to hip-hop beats wrapped together with super-good lyrics. The most important thing in that is wordplay, so that stayed with me when I started writing songs.
I want to make an album with just great beats and big vocals and just amazing lyrics.
I actually hate lyrics, and I hate it when they’re quoted in reviews. I don’t think they matter that much; it’s the sounds of words – not the words – that I look for.
There’s two facets to writing a song. There’s you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there’s the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.
Rammstein’s music demands German lyrics.
I wrote ‘Love Foolish,’ and when I heard the music for the first time, it felt like this was a song that Twice hadn’t done before. I thought the song and music had a very mature tone, so I wrote the lyrics to match. I was inspired by the music directly.
My music reflects the time on which we live, both in terms of arrangements, as well as in the subjects treated in the lyrics.
I’m a great believer in not over-thinking lyrics. You might become technically better as a songwriter, but you lose what originally made your songs great.
I used to know all the lyrics to all the songs from ‘The Phantom of the Opera.’
My lyrics aren’t offensive. Some people find everything offensive.
I love good beats and good lyrics. I’m pretty open.
I can be stupid in my lyrics or say whatever I want without having to worry about anybody else’s feeling or anybody being embarrassed by it or anything like that.
There were times in my career I went a little further than I wanted because of expectations. Doing certain things onstage when children were in the audience, wearing certain clothes, singing certain lyrics.
I’ve read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you’re singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.
The musical style and sound of ‘Love You to Death’ is something I wanted to do from the moment I started working on this album. It’s a very masculine track with dramatic lyrics.
Mad World’ was easy for me to sing because I could relate to Roland’s lyrics. We were both the middle of three sons and had been brought up by single mothers with absent fathers.
I find most modern country virtually unlistenable. I can’t relate to the music or the lyrics.
I’ve never seen myself as a pop singer. I grew up listening to gospel, soul and rock. My approach to pop is that, when I was doing my album, I wanted to have raw, genuine lyrics, but wanted it to be easy to process.
I’m always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.
If you break down most rock songs and look at the lyrics on a piece of paper, it’s all about melody. It’s all about presentation. And a lot of bands are really great, but you can’t understand a word of what they say.
I struggled for many, many years following ‘Music and Lyrics’ – I mean really struggled.
Inside of me, it was like my soul and what I had to do to feed my family was always split. I was writing lyrics while I was supposed to be working. I’d look up, and there’s my supervisor.
I’m a big perfectionist, and I like to make sure everything 120 percent, from the production to the vocal performance to the lyrics, the melody and everything.
I got a little bit lost in the writing process: like, that moment in the ‘Fight Song’ music video where I’m throwing the crumpled paper on the bed, that was really true life. I was filling journals with different possibilities of lyrics for the first verse. And none of them felt right.
Collaborating on lyrics has never worked for me.
I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.
A good song has to have a great melody, and the lyrics have to touch my heart. Now, if it’s just a little toe-tapper, got to make me feel good somehow or another, or when I sing it I can’t make you feel good.
I have a thing about inane lyrics – the world doesn’t need them.
If you want to relate me to the newer cats, let’s go. Let’s go line for line and bar for bar. If it’s all about spitting and metaphors and MCing and lyrics and entendres, I will eat 99 percent of you dudes up.
I love Paul Simon… his lyrics.
I don’t really plan what comes out of my mouth, and that’s what makes most of my lyrics entertaining.
I carry my iPod everywhere. My favorite group is the John Butler Trio, an Australian jam band. The lead singer and guitarist writes amazing lyrics.
When I’m writing, I’m focusing more on just the basic melody and the lyrics.
I’ve found lyrics in songs that always center me.
I don’t got nobody writing my lyrics and that’s why I freestyle.
I think the sound of ‘The Infamous’ came naturally from our lifestyle and some of the criminal things we were doing. We always rap about what we’re living, and to put a beat to lyrics like those is hard.
But, Eminem… No, I’ve loved rap for a long time, especially when it got out of its first period and became this gangsta rap, ya know this heavy rap thing? That’s when I started to fall in love with it. I loved the lyrics. I loved the beat.
If your life had lyrics, would they be any good?
I love Hank Williams, he’s the original emo kid. Some of his lyrics remind me of, like, Promise Ring lyrics.
There’s a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I’ve got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it… so I don’t write a million songs.
There are parts in albums where I wrote a lot of the lyrics. There are parts on albums where Steve wrote a lot of the lyrics, even albums where Steve did the majority of the lyric writing. Then there were albums like ‘Coming Home’ where I did most of the chorus lyric writing. But it was always split.
For a movie, you have to make sure the lyrics are consistent with the rhythm that is given to you. But, at times, during the song’s recording, you find out that your words are not appropriate for the track, and so you have to change them.
What I really like to do with my music is these concept stories, and I always like to have some life philosophies in the lyrics.
I’ve tried to work really hard on never phoning in the lyrics.
It’s likely that taboo words are stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. Massive left hemisphere strokes or the entire surgical removal of the left hemisphere can leave people with no articulate speech other than the ability to swear, spout cliches and song lyrics.
In Korean, my lyrics are witty and have twists. But translated into English, it doesn’t come over. I’ve tried writing in English, just for me, but it doesn’t work. I’ve got to know everything about a culture, and I don’t.
I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn’t have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn’t important it would just be a poem.
Soul lyrics, soul music came at about the same time as the civil rights movement, and it’s very possible that one influenced the other.
With lyrics, being a poet gave me a different approach than other people.
Yes, basically, like you said, I’ll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.
Other female rappers are overly sexual, have no wit, and their lyrics are so generic. I want to change the game to make rap that shows I’m not a normal female rapper – it’s not about how rich I am, how much sex I have, or how many boyfriends I have. That’s just not me.
We all write the lyrics together, but Frank really shines on ’em pretty good.
When I write a song, the music comes from my spirit, which is very playful and optimistic, but then the lyrics come from my head, which is in a different space.
The one album I can’t live without is called ‘Cumbolo’ by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there’s one in particular called ‘This Train.’ I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.
At times I have a beat first and then I write. Sometimes I have a melody in my head and I pick up the guitar to develop the song. Other times I just write without any melodies, and I end up using those lyrics when I think I have the appropriate instrumental that would bring out and depict the emotions of what I have written.
