Rick Nielsen Quotes

If you look at the content of songs people write, it's usually about the things they know best.

I like to write songs about what's happening, what I see around me and what I hear.

Singing your own songs is all about individual expression.

I just want to make good music. That's it. That's what I care about.

If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it.

I still write more songs about girls than anything else.

I wanted to be that quirky girl who writes funny songs that still have meaning.

My second record was all about big ideas - I was trying to make big statements about the culture, about life. I think in a certain way, I was a 27 year old kid with a guitar.

In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.

Most of the songs I wrote are personal.

To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing.

I like singing all songs, really, but I find that writing social commentary comes naturally.

I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

I started putting down my own pen and spending some time searching for the best songs out there possible. It doesn't matter if I wrote them or not.

I can make a song up about anything: garbage, the weather, things in the news.

I write my songs and just play them, so there are not a whole lot of fireworks. As long as the music comes first, it's OK to have some fireworks. But not the other way around.

If you were to hold me to a standard of, 'What are you doing, singing about a scratch-off ticket at your level of success?' then my music's gonna be ridiculous.

How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.

The beauty of being a musician is writing songs. That's the best part. It's therapeutic and honest and private.

I wouldn't say that my songs are autobiographical.

I have songs about growing up, about ex-relationships - ex-relationship, I should say.

A lot of times, I walk down the street and listen to people argue, and then I write a song about it.

I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.

I wish that I'd written John Lennon's 'Imagine.'

I looked at myself, and I just said, 'Well, you know, I can sing, but I'm not the greatest singer in the world. I can play guitar very well, but I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world.' So I said, 'Well, if I'm going to project an individuality, it's going to have to be in my writing.'