Leon Bridges Quotes

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

Most of the really good songs are dead true. ... It had to have happened to have the song be there. Every time I've tried to make stuff up it just kind of falls flat. So the majority of my work is something that happened to me, I saw happen to someone else, or a friend of mine told me happened. There is a certain amount of theatrical and poetic license. People are supposed to like it, that's why you're doing it. It's supposed to be fun. It's not brain surgery, it's heart surgery. They're just songs.

There are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.

I'm not writing just classic-sounding songs, but songs that come from experience.

I think of myself as a songwriter, a weaver of story and imagination in a way that a novelist might write a book.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

I see pictures in my mind and become the character in the song as I'm writing. It's kind of method songwriting, where you're the actor in the song.

I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!

I write songs from the point of view I had at a time;I'm not tryingto write songs from a young person's point of view.That only ends in disaster.

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me.

As a songwriter, you're allowed to write anything, and as a person, I am all colors in the rainbow. I've been through everything, you know, so I can write a positive song like 'Better Get to Livin'' because that's my attitude. But that doesn't mean I'm happy all the time. You can't be a deep and serious songwriter without feelings. You kinda have to live with your feelings out on your sleeve and get hurt more than most people. The fear I might get hurt means I might not be able to write another song.

I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.

When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.

I wouldn't say that my songs are autobiographical.

When I'm writing, I'm focusing more on just the basic melody and the lyrics.

I had a lot of time to myself, and I would listen to a lot of music, mostly music that I knew fairly well and had a relationship with. And I'd think, well, what is it that I've never been able to do that this person or people are able to do with this song? Why haven't I been able to do it, and what can they do that I wish I could do? And then I'd try to do that. I'd start each day getting into the songs, and I'd think about how I might get closer to this music that I love, but haven't been able to make before.

Writing the songs is always emotional and most of the vocals on there are the first three takes from the demos, because they give so much more. You're in that moment, so it speaks for itself.

You never forget where you were when you write a song; it's a very proper memory, so I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing for each track. It was like going into a time machine.

It doesn't really matter what chords I play, what words I say or time of day it is, as it's only a Northern Song.

Lena Dunham or Miranda July, those people are sort of thinking about their work in a slightly different way than I do, where their whole body is a seed of what they're creating. I can't imagine watching Miranda's movies with anybody else playing her role, she's so integral. But for me, it feels more like every story is really individual. If I thought of something else, or thought it should be my body representing it, I'd fold my body into it. But most of the time I'm writing to get something out of my body.

You know, there's an economy in lyric-writing that doesn't afford you, or at least me - I usually start off with nine or 10 verses and then boil it down to two or three that are half the length of the original verses. I think for me it's about what you leave out [rather] than what you put in. I'm not sure that the songs help me figure anything out so much as they're a distillation of the original question.

I can only write songs when somebody gives me some water to swim in. Otherwise, I'm a fish on the beach.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

I think all of my songs are either based on personal experience or will be based on personal experience, because I do write a lot of songs prophetically.

I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying not to think about.