Valerie June Quotes

I don't know about the time those songs were written. But he was jamming with someone in Colorado or San Francisco, and I'm sure he was working on the lyrics right up to the show because they were really relevant for the situation.

I'm a songwriter; that's where it starts. I love writing with someone that shares that same feeling of accomplishment. I'll play music for my fans as long as they'll listen, but I fancy myself as a writer first.

When I write songs, I like to write lyrics first, and I think that's different from a lot of singer-songwriters. But I heard Sammy Cahn was asked what comes first, the lyrics or the music, and he said, 'The paycheck.'

However long the song is was how long it took us to write it.

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.

I did co-write 'Moment of Forever' with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.

When we write songs, we don't ever sit down to write an Old Dominion song. We just sit down to write the best song we possibly can.

I write the best songs I can.

It was actually working with Kendrick Lamar that pushed me further into the act of songwriting, specifically.

I always have to be thinking about who's going to be singing this song, what the context is. I don't sit around just writing in a vacuum, ever.

Fundamentally, our job as songwriters is to sit down and listen.

My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs.

When you're writing a song, you have to know two things. You have to know who you are, and you have to think about other people.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

I used to live with J.D. Souther, and I would watch him write. He's be sitting, he'd say something, and then he'd write it down. That's craft.

There is a formula that allows you to write a decent song. But a song like 'You're All I Need to Get By,' it just writes itself.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

I heard some stuff recently from Julian Casablancas, and his solo stuff is amazing. If I could write with anyone, it would be him.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!

I never have, but I would love to pick R. Kelly's brain.

I write by myself and then deliver the song. Everybody knows, 'Leave Ester alone when she's in her zone.' Give me a studio and the tracks, and I'll call you when the doctor is done.

When you're an artist, you can only do your own stuff. Even if you only write for other people, you're really more focused on yourself. So while everybody's out touring, I'm working on records.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing.

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.