J. D. Souther Quotes

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

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

I don't sit down to write a song, per se.

I write when I have to; I write when the song is done and I deal with the idea and I just go with it and I'll become what that song is all about until I have finished it. And when you do that, it makes the song more visual, it makes it more personal.

When I'm writing a song, I'm just making stuff up as I go along.

I probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

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

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can't really find a way to change those things.

The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end.

It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting.

When I'm recording, I usually just mumble and hum a melody and then fill the words in as I go.

I used to do three or four songs a day, just write them - boom, boom, boom, and done - because of how spontaneous I was.

Every time somebody asks me, 'Oh, when you mix your own music, what are you going to make?' And I don't know.

I've never had trouble finding inspiration for new songs, no matter what I'm doing.

When I write songs, it happens very quickly, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes, and I draw inspiration from everything.

The songs will come as they come, and I'm excited because I haven't gotten to be really creative in a while. I'm excited to get back and do what I do and just write a song.

I can't force myself to make up a song. Music comes to me naturally.

It doesn't necessarily take four years to write a good piece of music. It might take four hours. It just depends on when your inspiration comes.

I really don't do concept stuff very well. If I'm sitting thinking about what kind of song I want to write, within a few minutes, I'm kind of bored. It's just a personal thing for me.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I would write poems and think up melodies to them later.

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.

When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it - why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the '90s - 'Nick of Time' and other songs I was surprised I came up with - it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.