Chris Cornell Quotes

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

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.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

I don't write songs, songs write me. ... Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy. It can take half an hour or half a year. ... The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.

All the best lyrics are written in ten minutes.

I'm creating songs. I do it most of the time, in the car or in the house.

I think the way I write is kind of naturally rhythmic. If there's anything of my own in my writing, I think that's my own thing. Like when I start a song, I almost hear the rhythm more than the melody.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

Sometimes I can't sleep 'cause I can't get a melody or a beat out my head, so I just have to wake up and, like, record it on a voice note.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

I just get an idea and then all of a sudden I've got a song.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

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.

Other people notice the same things but they don't think to put it to music.

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

I think there are ways a place can sneak its way into a song, or a feeling that you take into the studio.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.

There's only one proper way a song should go, but you've got to be patient enough to let them come together time wise. Sometimes it's lightning in a bottle and you got the song. But oftentimes it shows up.