Tones and I Quotes

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

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

If you're thinking about making a hit song, and you think I want everybody in the world to love it, then you kind of make it up, and you do it.

On a good night, I probably make three songs, and none of them are full songs.

It doesn't take me long to write songs.

Usually, my rhymes are just in my head. I start off with a theme, and once I start rapping and writing and singing, the chorus and all that, it just starts flowing. Then it's done in about an hour! I write a lot of songs.

I think sometimes - not always - I write songs that are accessible.

The moment I wrote my first song, I got addicted.

It's really hard to write personal songs. I'm not good at writing ditties because as far as writing hit songs that you pitch to the national artist, I just don't write that way.

There were aspects of stardom I didn't like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write 'Setting Sons,' I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.

I'm not making music to get played in a club.

When I look at acts, I look at the worldwide potential. And what travels wide is melody.

People come to me to write songs that will be successful for them, and they allow me the freedom to do so.

I've written hundreds of songs, and I tend to think that my instincts are pretty good when it comes to what people are going to like and what people aren't going to like.

The focus is on melody: If you get it right, and it connects to the mass audience, it doesn't matter if it's a studio album or played on the dance floor.

I'm trying to write songs to appeal to everybody.

I was constantly in the studio at my home writing ideas that would later become 'Hotel California' or 'Victim of Love.'

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

I'd say 99 per cent of the time I write on my own, just with my guitar, and then it's trying to figure out what it needs in a production sense.

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'm a songwriter.

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

I think if you're able to make the music you want and you can do it in the right kind of context, you don't have to be a circus ringleader to be successful.

I'm really good at writing 'almost hits'.

I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.