Mat Kearney Quotes

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

In the past, I've written my songs and then asked friends if they could record the vocals. I didn't want to use my own voice, because other people have much better voices. I was hearing the music with a voice that I don't have. It was a case of pulling whatever resources I had to get the sound I wanted, but that doesn't take anything away from the authorship. They are songs written by me that sound the way I want them to sound. Whether it's my voice or someone else's doesn't make a difference to the music.

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.

I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.

I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.

You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

Things like 'Lucky Man' were never written to even be a record, let alone a hit record.

You're successful if you can get one person to pick it up and put it on the turntable and go, Wow, thanks for writing that!

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

Coming to Nashville has been so motivating and inspirational. Just watching people live and breathe their music and create something that they can feel from start to finish.

It's funny, when I'm not on the road or doing stuff with Bad Company - or whatever- I've always written songs galore... a lot of stuff people don't even hear.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I'd be writing hit songs every minute.

I've never forgotten a single record I cut or a song I wrote.

I really like the thing I did with Martina McBride. I had that song sitting around for a long time.

A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.

Everything starts and ends with the song, and working with writers and really learning their process and craft was an invaluable experience.

I've been lucky, because people have done such great versions of my songs, and I've worked with the best singers ever, and I'm lucky 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.

If you're thinking the road ahead is a little shorter than the one behind you, you're thinking about trying to write a good song and hoping to make a decent record of it.

I think I was 15 the first time I wrote a good song.

I wrote a song with Ed Sheeran that was kind of spontaneous.

As long as you continue to have new songs, there's usually some new topic or something to present.

If you can take a piece of life and put it in a song, it's going to be a good song - especially if it's from the heart.