I’m definitely not a nerd… but maybe I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to music and lyrics and things like that. Other than that, I’m definitley not a nerd. I wish I was, though.
I study my competition for at least an hour a day. I get on the Internet, I look at what they doing, and then I look at ways to defeat them. I know their mixtapes track-by-track. I know some of their lyrics.
Music – not just the lyrics, but the music itself – expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.
If you’re gonna use simile, analogy, metaphor, be descriptive and have some flowery adjectives and a few odd nouns and some engaging bits of dialogue or sentiment, then you’re sort of writing a novel, really. But rock lyrics are not really known for their sophistication.
Sometimes I’ll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.
I do think the love-gone-wrong songs go over better, only because those melodies and those lyrics have a different feel that you can grasp on if you’re a torch singer like myself.
Most of the time, the lyrics are kind of like my secret messages to my friends or my boyfriend or my mom or my dad. I would never tell them that these songs are about them or which specific lyric is about somebody. Often, when I sit down to write a lyric, it is in the heat of the moment, and something has just happened.
I like hip-hop music, but some of the lyrics make me want to cry.
Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They’re my biggest heroes. I love everything about Leonard Cohen: his lyrics and his voice. He seems like a really clever man, and Bob Dylan does as well. He’s just really cool.
And I think as long as a song has beautiful lyrics, I’m so happy.
When you hear my lyrics, you hear the shots that I throw at people. I throw shots because I always been the underdog. I got rejected so many times, and I say it in my lyrics constantly.
Etta James takes credit for writing some of the lyrics on ‘I’d Rather Go Blind,’ which I think are some of the most phenomenal lyrics I’ve ever heard. There’s arguments now about who wrote it, but she always takes credit for it in her live performances.
My favorite song that I wrote is ‘Love Line.’ This was my first song that I wrote lyrics for, and I really wanted to express the feeling when you’re in love and hoping the other person feels the same way.
I realized that, for me, great records always moved me with the lyrics and the melodies. And so I said, ‘I think I can do it now,’ ’cause I found a team of people who understand I didn’t want a record that was ‘drop it, pop it, shake it’ just ’cause I can dance.
I’m without a doubt a producer first. The lyrics happen towards the tail-end of the process, mainly because they’re more stream-of-consciousness. It’s very rare that I’m going to tell a really concrete story.
I think I enjoy Sondheim so much because of the lyrics. The lyrics, the cornucopia of options.
I just learned my lyrics and tried not to bump into the trumpet player. That was my philosophy.
Lyrics are so important, I hate every second of writing them, but it’s something I take great pride in when it’s finished.
Songwriters always reminded me of that kid at school who would go around with his guitar, like, ‘Yeah, songwritin’ man,’ looking wistful. That wasn’t me – those kinds of people put me off. In the early days, I’d write a bunch of lyrics and almost look at them as a sort of joke, to make the rest of the boys laugh.
I still to this day get the most inspiration from rap lyrics.
I’ve been singing about love a long time now, because my kind of love carries a different flavor. My lyrics are not so outrageous as some. You have to think about a lot of different things. You get more mature with what you do – more experience, more capable, you know, the older you get.
Steve Allen was on Johnny Carson one time – I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it – and he read the lyrics to ‘Hot Stuff’ by Donna Summer like a poet. He read them very seriously. I was maybe 8, but it killed me.
A right balance between music and lyrics is important. Music complements lyrics.
We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it’s timeless that we as humans are going to feel something for that and there’s going to be a real appreciation.
For every album we worked on, I brought in reels of tape of somewhere between fourteen and eighteen songs – some of them completed, with lyrics and melodies, some of them basic tracks. Things came out of those products. Like, for ‘Hotel California’, I think I had a reel with sixteen songs on it.
I just make up lyrics off the top of my head. A lot of times, there’s a phrase I really like, and I kind of build the song around that.
We start a lot with melodies and instrumentation and trying to figure out good melodies for verses and choruses. We get to lyrics sometimes second, so we’ll start humming a melody, finding something, and see where the music takes you as far as lyrics are and what you want to say and go from there.
I like collaboration because, first of all, I’m good at writing lyrics. I don’t know how to make beats. I don’t play instruments. I’m not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it’s still a collaboration.
I never edit the songs that come out. And they tend to come out as a whole. The closest thing I have ever done to editing them is just cutting out a verse, but never rewriting lyrics.
Cynthia’s lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn’t express themselves.
I write my lyrics into the computer and I hum my music into the dictaphone.
I kinda feel that my brother wrote some of the best country lyrics ever – ‘The Ballad of Curtis Loew,’ ‘Mississippi Kid’ and that little hit ‘Sweet Home Alabama.’
When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.
I wrote and recorded a song that I highly doubt I will release. The lyrics are somewhat risque. I may have to create an alter ego, and she can be the ‘singer.’
I grew up with vinyl records and remember the pleasure and the kind of buzz that I got from buying a beautiful vinyl record with the sleeve and the lyrics – all that kind of tactile experience that you could get from an old vinyl record.
Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music.
My parents have always had a great sense of humor. And I really appreciate good humor in songs, witty lyrics that sneak up on you and then you listen again, and say: ‘That’s so funny.’ John Prine’s songs have always had this really witty tone.
I used to get these reviews in American newspapers saying that they didn’t understand what my lyrics were about. I saw that as a compliment. That’s exactly what English songwriters should be doing!
If you take the duality of things – like sunny-sounding music with weird lyrics on it – it makes this dichotomy. I’ve never had that because when I make music, I make major chords, happy-sounding stuff, and my lyrics are positive.
I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.
When I sing a tune, the lyrics are important to me. Most of the standard lyrics I know well. And as soon as I hear an arrangement, I get ideas, kind of like blowing a horn. I guess I never sing a tune the same way twice.
Always when I write my music, I take my guitar, and I improvise always with a melody, you know, lyrics in Spanish. But sometimes I use some words in English. I don’t know why. Maybe because I listen to a lot of music in English.
I’ve never written lyrics. I get up in front of a microphone, and I just sing what comes to the top of my head.
When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.
I’m proud of the younger Roland. Very proud of some of the lyrics. They stand up today. I’m cool with it, though some of it is a bit painful.
I think the one I’m most proud of as a songwriter is ‘Breaking Your Heart’ because it was just a different style for me. It was very – I feel like it was very old-timey Patsy Cline. It’s got a very ’50s feel to it, and I pushed myself to write those lyrics very intimately with my co-writer Ted Bruner.
Hearing other peoples’ interpretations of your lyrics, to me, is just a total kick in the pants. Half the time, they’re better.
Lyrics are kind of the whole thing; it’s the message. Something might have a beautiful melody but if it’s not the truth coming out of your mouth, it’s not appealing.
Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.
The goal with a show is to push forward the passion in a visual and sonic way. It all comes out in a trance-like way, fast and pulsating. Then people can go home and think about the lyrics later.
I take pride in lyrics. I take pride in music and staying on beat and being on key.
I speak three languages – English is my third language – so I take my time with lyrics. It’s almost like having a conversation with somebody. If it’s really important, you want to think about what you wanna say with that person, especially if it’s for the last time.
