Mose Allison Quotes

It's a really big struggle for me to write a song. Songs take either 30 seconds for me to write or a year or two to piece together, depending on the song and how I'm feeling on any given day. I don't really like to write music at all unless I am completely unbothered by touring.

I don't sit down to write a song; they just come to me from something that somebody says, or something in the news. The punchline comes to me, and I go over it in my head and get the song form. I hadn't been doing that a lot.

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.

It's always amazing seeing the song-writing process. A song just starts off as just an idea or a story you want to tell. It keeps building and building when you add the lyrics, the instruments, the vocals until you finally reach the finished song other people can enjoy.

Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

I have enjoyed writing songs for so long... it felt like in order to make music that I could relate to myself, I would have to be a part of the writing process.

I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.

When I get an idea for a song it would gel in my mind for weeks or months, and then one day just like that, Ill write it.

Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance.

Sometimes I start with lyrics - rarely - but sometimes I might have an idea for some lyrics that I wanna say. I write them down and figure out how to use that in a melody to write a song.

I'm never sure if I'll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it.

I don't write songs, songs write me. ... Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy. It can take half an hour or half a year. ... The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.

I write songs on a course of time that's comfortable for me. I would probably never write a song from start to finish in the course of a day, hell probably not even a week. My mind is always going to change and my emotional state will also change on a daily basis.

Sometimes it could be just during the day, when I'm riding in the car or on the plane. I'll hear somebody say something that strikes a chord and I write it down and write bars at a time, and then when I'm in the studio I go to those bars and I'm like, "Maybe I should make a song about this."

Well, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.

When I used to write songs, especially on my own, it was just me and a guitar.

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

Sometimes I start with a great title or idea, sometimes a great melody will run through my mind; but the higher percentage of the time, the words and music pretty much come at the same time.

Sometimes melody and sometimes lyrics. It depends on the tempo and feel of the song. Slower pieces usually begin with melody and faster ones with lyrics. I write for the song and it leads me to my conclusion.

It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. I like when it's really organic, so I try to knock it out in one shot.

It's funny when you write a song - it's easy for me now - but there's almost a second stage where you take control of the song. You start writing it, and if you're not careful, it just finishes itself and it might not be what you wanted. It's very strange, it takes over itself. It has its own life.