Ben Gibbard Quotes

Capitol Records were very keen for me to write and see how I got on; I think that is what defined my sound. The first session I had was with two young up-and-coming writers, Nick Atkinson and Tom Wilding, and I went into a session a bit nervous because I hadn't written that many songs before.

Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.

I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.

For us, we make a song, and if we like it, it goes on a record.

I want to literally quit drag and go live in the woods somewhere and write music for my favorite female singers, like Miley Cyrus or Kacey Musgraves. I would love to be able to write music for them and hear these women I admire sing my songs. That would be like doing drag without having to get into drag myself.

Being a songwriter, my job is just to write songs for people. I'm not attached to them.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs.

I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.

Whenever I have time, I try to get in the studio and write, whether it's for me or other artists or my catalog of music. It's definitely one of my favorite parts of the music industry.

Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.

But if you want to be in a band and write music, then you should just be in a band and write music.

The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

The kids of today have taken over the music business - most of them very young. Simply because they write and jot down a few notes, they have the idea that they can write songs.

When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.

We didn't want to worry about the formula that has been implanted into our brains - this verse/pre-chorus/chorus format. When we were writing 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea about any of that. We didn't know how to count bars or how to write what's considered a well-formatted pop song.

I will write a verse or a story and bring it into a songwriting session, because that's what's big in Nashville - the collaborative part of songwriting.

With 'Love Shack,' once we put that chorus in, it did have more of a song structure. Even though the verses are all kind of different, the chorus was there along with 'The Love Shack' - I think that really made it a hit. Once we heard it in the studio, we played it for R.E.M., and they were like, 'Yes this is a hit.'

I believe it's possible to have hit songs and popular music that's recorded by human beings.

I'm so into making music and being behind the scenes. I'm such a visionary person that I don't see myself being the person in front of the camera or the person in front of the mic.

If you want to be a songwriter, you've got to obsess over it.

In order to write music, you need lots of Tabasco sauce.

With songwriters like me who are prolific, you just write the song and then put it on tape.

I consider myself a songwriter... I guess the business end is my songs and the fun part is playing the guitar.

We travel so much as touring musicians and artists that sometimes, when you hear a great song that you really think could be on your project, you go ahead and record it instead of try to write it.