I want to touch people’s lives with my music and my lyrics.
My father used to tape ‘Top of the Pops’ for me every Sunday, and I would sit in my bedroom, write down the lyrics of all of my favourite songs, and sing along. I was always singing in my bedroom with a hairbrush.
A lot of people don’t listen to the lyrics, really.
The truth is hip hop has always complemented jazz and vice versa, but there’s always been this communication barrier that exists based on music to lyrics.
He doesn’t make it so complicated but just really allows the lyric to come through even though there’s a lot of production going on. I think that’s the key and that’s the magic, it’s making sure that people could still connect with the lyrics while they’re on the dance floor.
I like Jay-Z for his lyrics, his flow; he’s always forward thinking.
Yeah, ‘Mine’ was inspired by a person, but it became much deeper than that. I obviously pulled lyrics… from stuff I was actually saying to this person and feeling about this person, but it was for people. I didn’t want to make that song to impress that girl; I wanted to make that song to make people feel better.
Our lyrics deal with real issues that face all humans: choices in life, depression, self-esteem. And the fans know that we are there for them, and they are there for us.
In both pop and disco, the meaning of the lyrics is not too important. I have nothing I feel I particularly want to say.
If you actually dissect the lyrics in ‘Motley Crue’, you’ll notice that there’s a lot going on beneath the surface.
I try not to agonize over my lyrics, though, because that can come across in them. Some lyrics come more easily than others and some you have to spend a lot of time on, but I think you have to watch that you don’t take the life out of them by worrying too much.
The only criticism heard with any frequency of Elton John’s first American album, ‘Elton John,’ was that the production was too grandiose. The melodies were superb, and lyrics frequently very good, and the performances flawless.
As a songwriter you have an umbilical cord to the song and it’s hard to expand on your understanding of the lyrics. Whereas when you cover a song you can create your own reason why you’re attached to it.
I come from an era where lyrics were full of imagery and metaphor, and that’s all I know. I think people miss that.
I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.
I like to compose, but only for myself. I write my own lyrics and compose the music around them.
For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.
I am a big Pink Floyd fan. That is where a lot of the concept lyrics come from.
I’ve learned by experience that, if I get too clever with lyrics, or if I’m not totally embodying my own wants and needs in the songs, I can’t remember them.
With ‘Light,’ I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first – they were written before the music.
Playing the guitar, you kind of lock into a rhythm and a groove, and then it relaxes me to make up lyrics and sing.
I’m a big fan of lyrics – lyrics are the thing that move me in certain ways.
I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band – just for fun – when I was 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish.
You won’t talk to anybody who breaks lyrics down more thoroughly. It’s just a complete deconstruction, and when you start to rebuild, nobody has the capacity to do it like me. Which is not to say I’m better, it’s just that there’s a unique quality to everyone.
With my first three albums I did everything on my own. It was what I was used to and where I felt comfortable. I would write the lyrics and music and hide the songs from everyone until I felt confident enough for anyone to hear them.
It’s so crazy to see people singing along to songs that aren’t even released yet. I’m like, ‘How do you even know the lyrics? Have you been watching YouTube?’
All my songs are clean, and I am very careful about the lyrics, too.
I think it need realness, you should speak on thing that you know about, that you being from, that you experienced or that you been around, you know. I think you need a good hook, good beats and good lyrics.
I’ve always wanted to work with Klashnekoff. He’s been around for years! He’s sorta my age but he is dope. The flow, the lyrics, it’s just dope music.
I sit a lot with my lyrics – I don’t write just to write or put a line in just to have one. Everything has to mean something to me.
There was a recording studio in my school, and I knew this kid who had a key, so I’d write lyrics in school while I was in class, and then, in a 10-minute break, I recorded the song ‘Hurt’ in one go at the school studio.
The inspiration behind ‘Tardy for the Party’ was first and foremost my daughter Brielle. She co-wrote the original lyrics when she was nine years old.
Lyrics are really important for me.
My lyrics are for strong, independent women who are both smart and fashionable.
I firmly believe lyrics have to breathe and give the audience’s ear a chance to understand what’s going on. Particularly in the theater, where you have costume, story, acting, orchestra.
As a boy, I was known for reciting whole songs after one listen. I’ve always had a good memory for lyrics. It’s weird because I don’t have a good memory for other things. I remember lyrics easier than the shopping list.
Critics always get the lyrics wrong in reviews, which is amusing – especially when they use them against you.
Most of the time, comparing printed song lyrics with poems is like comparing recipes with food: that’s to say, patently unfair.
I was always interested in trying to find how different genres would affect the lyrics that I’d written. Salsa is where most of my songs have been recorded, the genre of salsa. It’s very frenetic, fast-paced. And I felt that the lyrics sometimes were being lost.
I think Mighty Moe really got me into a whole different style of MCing. There were a lot of people with simple lyrics and simple word play- he really pushed out the boat.
Lyrics are very different. There is a clear line between that and a poem. Something that has been a source of great excitement and delight for me is this idea that I get to rhyme.
I’m the guy that gets up at three in the morning to jot down an entire sheet of lyrics for something that won’t be recorded for six months. You have to get it down when you can, because thoughts are fluid.
Working with other artists and writers over the past couple years has really given me a clear idea of my strengths and weaknesses and what is unique about me as an artist. I figured it’s my storytelling lyrics, falsetto range and tone of voice, so I write songs to utilize those.
