Taylor Swift Quotes

Writing a song to be a single is hard, and I don't like to focus on that because you can get caught up in making something just terrible, which is really easy to do if you're focused on making it a single. It's more fun when you focus on what excites you musically.

And frankly, when I made that record, hit songs were not what I was trying to achieve.

I don't like working with hitmakers. I don't want hits! You're not even allowed to say that word around me.

I could make a PartyNextDoor album that's clean, all hits. That's not what I care about doing.

The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.

I'm in a very good place to make records. Needing to make money off music is very dangerous.

I don't write songs thinking about formats, where is it going to get played, who am I gonna please, what's the outlet for it.

Several record companies had rejected my song 'Owner of A Lonely Heart' on the grounds it was 'too left field.' I never create to make a hit just to satisfy some record company executive's quarterly profit statement.

All through the kind of late '80s and '90s, every A&R record company man was saying, 'Now what we want is another record like 'Back in the High Life.' And, of course, that's not the way to make music at all. That's the tail wagging the dog.

You want to sell records, but if you want to call yourself an artist, your job is how you express yourself.

Of course, I want to sell records, and of course I want to get played on radio, but it has to be about making the record that I'm proud of.

Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.

My task with 'Uh-Huh' was to make a more even record and get away from juvenile topics like 'Hurts So Good.' But I also knew if I wanted to continue, I had to have more hits.

I suppose we'll make money off our album and our singles and stuff, but, like, they were made as we wanted them, exactly with what we had to say, and done exactly how we wanted them, right? And, like, we didn't put them out to make money. We put them out because we wanted to do them, do you know what I mean?

I try to make the songs as good as I can - the way I like it, you know? And I guess my taste sometimes happens to be what other people, particularly radio programmers, like too.

I know when I've written a good song when I can imagine the video. If I can't imagine the video straight away, I'm not gonna put it on my album.

In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.

I really wanted a No. 1 single from my first album, but I would not do anything different. It was real and honest and I didn't pretend anything.

I just want to make music that people hear, and I'm not ashamed of that.

Most of our artists are songwriters, so the songs are still central to all this. If you don't have great songs, it doesn't matter the marketing or how many times you are on TV; you can only polish it so much.

I always said, if I got a record deal, I'd want to record the best songs I could, whether I wrote them or not.

I'm not going to make a song just to make a song. The day that I make an album, it's so that people really know what Bad Bunny's about.

I wouldn't consciously pursue trying to make something for the charts. It's just not in my scope now. I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.

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

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