Steve Earle Quotes

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

The music is in the lead here, and a large part of this, I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel a closer bond with the craft of songwriting, stronger than I ever have.

A lot of bands are influenced by other bands, and that informs their songwriting for sure. It definitely informs my songwriting, too. But it's more about not thinking about it, and if it comes out of you, it's better.

Lennon and McCartney became great songwriters because they were prepared to listen to and learn from all types of music.

After writing quite a few songs now, I have not a method but a way of being patient with a couple of verses or a certain set of chords. I can match them up quicker now than I used to. The one thing you do improve is songwriting.

Of course, you can't teach songwriting. You can only encourage people to do it and help them to sort out for themselves what they want to achieve, and get a list of exercises together that improves the craft and gives them more access to the craft of writing good songs.

A lot of people start by learning other people's songs, but the idea of singing someone else's music didn't excite me. I just wanted to write my own. It was really bad to begin with. It's improved slightly since.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

It took me a long time to learn how to write a good song.

It's interesting to do other people's music - that's how I learned to play, by learning other people's songs. It's nice to delve into how other people got to where they are.

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.

Early in my songwriting career, when I was learning a lot about writing songs, I'd force myself to sit down until I came up with something.

You're not gonna write a hundred songs and have a hundred entirely different ideas. It's a matter of finding the ones that are the freshest and most unique.

Song writing is very serious; it is hard.

We wrote the songs we wrote - we took from our own experiences, melded it together, and wrote what became 'Appetite For Destruction.'

I've always had good songs, it's the great songs that are difficult to find.

It's not that I'm trying to write another '7 Years' or a new version of 'Mama Said.' Songs just kind of come out of nowhere, and you need to catch them when they do.

One musician listens to another musician, and you get inspired and then you do your thing, but it's yours.

Imitation, if noble and general, insures the best hope of originality.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

Sometimes the word dictated the melody.

Whenever I wrote songs - particularly back then - it would always be for a particular artist.

Eventually I had so many little melodies and ideas that, you know, that they were all songs to me and I threw in a few cover songs like Enya's "Watermark," Bach, and my dad's song, "Song for the Whales."

I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.