Joanna Newsom Quotes

I am really heavy into songwriting.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.

I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?

I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.

All of the musicians when I was young used to always say you had to tell a story when you're a musician.

I don't think I really make singer-songwritery-type music - it's not my strong point.

A right balance between music and lyrics is important. Music complements lyrics.

It's really only all about music. It's not like a big rocket scientist kind of philosophy or anything.

Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.

In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.

I'm all about the melody.

I'm used to making songs; that's how I learned to make music. My structures will always be more like pop songs than dance tracks.

Musically, I always wanted to experiment.

I love to work with producers who are very good with their chord progressions.

I fell into lyric writing because of music. I backed into it.

I privilege the music over the lyrics.

I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first.

I was feeling really restless in my hard-rock band. I wanted to learn more about storytelling in music, and that's what country music is.

I've been gearing up for this future of writing a lot of new music by digging into my favorite old stuff, and twisting it around and highlighting the things I really love.

I used to help Viv with the chords and melodies sometimes.

Being a songwriter is really the base of being an artist, for me.

Plus, we spend most of our time writing music. Most of the time is spent in the studio in my house.

Music is about textures as well as melody.

I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.