J. J. Cale Quotes

I mean Gorilla was really our first sort of goes at songwriting.

I really wanted to work hard on my lyrics.

I'm not a musician making words to go with my music.

I'm a songwriter.

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

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

Every song has a bouquet, which is the music. If you can put words with something that is really apt, then you've done it.

The classic, quote/unquote, craft of songwriting still works; it still is relevant.

I write a lot of rhymes, but I don't really end up using them a lot of times, and I end up just freestyling. I like to write music, though, more than I like to freestyle, to be honest.

It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do.

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

It's a combination of melody and lyrics, not one without the other. It's a confluence of these different elements that makes something powerful.

I have always written poetry but I have never applied it to songwriting.

Lyrics are the only thing to do with music that haven't been made easier technically.

I just don't write musically, but lyrically, yeah I write.

Lyrics are my racket; music is play - the fluff stuff.

The very best thing you can do is to try to write a song that has some sort of impact.

I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of good songwriters, and I try to actually work on the craft of writing a song rather than just leaving it up to inspiration.

Music is closer to poetry than anything.

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

It's not just music. To me, it's songwriting more than anything. A lot of people say it's expression, but to me, it's more than that.

Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can't sing, I call a poem.

Songwriting is an art unto itself, not to be confused with performing.

It doesn't take me long to write songs.

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.