Bill Callahan Quotes

I love writing music, but it seems I'm always writing words, so I don't get much time to do it.

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.

I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

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.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?

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.

I have a really hard time writing my own lyrics for this record, because one, I had to write so many and also I was kind of perplexed by the idea of how I was going to sing and play... because at that time, we hadn't really thought about asking someone else.

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.

I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I've written.

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 find it very difficult to compose when I'm not playing.

I'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.

I write music all the time. When I talk about having writer's block, it's more to do with lyrics than anything else.

I cannot watch my own dailies, ever. I'm my worst critic. It distracts me. I can watch it when it's done, but I'm not the girl that wants to run back and look at the performance.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

The thing is, in English I'm able to write the lyrics as I'm making the song, once I'm done with the melody.

After that, I specifically started writing lyrics. I would like sweat and think and get it all together.

It's hard to decide how to match words to music. It's not like it's twice the work. It's always difficult for me to explain to the composer what I'm looking for. I'm not a professional; I lack even basic knowledge about writing music.

At times I have a beat first and then I write. Sometimes I have a melody in my head and I pick up the guitar to develop the song. Other times I just write without any melodies, and I end up using those lyrics when I think I have the appropriate instrumental that would bring out and depict the emotions of what I have written.

We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

I was never a 'sit down with a notepad and write lyrics' kind of person.

I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.