Barry Mann Quotes

I'm not Prince or Rivers Cuomo, who brags about having hundreds of great songs.

I'm not sure I know how to make music anymore. Maybe you're given a window into things for a time, and beyond that maybe it goes away. Why should you expect it to stay?

Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in.

In the three years that nobody heard music from me, I made more music than I've ever made.

When I have a creative block, I take walks. I like to see what shapes stick out - so many legs rushing by at once, it can seem abstract. I don't need to see great art to get stirred up. Music does that for me more easily.

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 really just tried to make a record full of great songs, which is the goal I always have.

I get so many ideas for songs, but I'm so seldom disciplined enough to sit down and crank them out.

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

I'd always wanted to do an R&B and soul record; a friend with a studio asked to come by and record a couple of songs, maybe just make a 45. Then the songs started to pour out, and pretty soon we had eight or 10 songs down.

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 never write from concept. The beat is the beginning, and then I fill in the rest of the song into what it should be.

When I start working on a batch of tunes - like roughly 10 solid tunes - I always know there'll be another 10 to follow, because for every song I invest a lot of time in, there's another song waiting behind it.

Most designers work up to a peak. They do some great stuff, and then it's just junk.

When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.

I feel that Jane's is really a vibe and a time. It wasn't like we were the Beatles. We didn't have crafty pop songs where it sort of didn't matter who played them because they're just really great songs.

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

At some point, I went to the studio and nothing happened. It can be really depressing to sit there and wait for the inspiration that doesn't come. I had to start recording rough song ideas before going to the studio. I did that at home whenever I had a good idea.

I actually had a week where I literally wrote four songs and all of them are on my album. But sometimes you'll go a week where you'll write songs and they never see the light of day. So that process takes a long time.

My goal is to think of nothing when I'm writing a song because too many influences could sabotage a potentially amazing song.

I found it was really impossible for me to write songs when I couldn't sing.