Jewel Quotes

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

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.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.

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 usually dream of melodies. When I wake up I have them in my head. I usually come up with things in the middle of the night because that's when my mind is the quietest. I always have my tape recorder, pen and pad by my bed just in case.

So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

We start a lot with melodies and instrumentation and trying to figure out good melodies for verses and choruses. We get to lyrics sometimes second, so we'll start humming a melody, finding something, and see where the music takes you as far as lyrics are and what you want to say and go from there.

I'd never written a song before 'The Blood'; I didn't know it was going to be a song.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

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

Finding fresh song topics can sometimes be quite difficult.

I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record.

I don't have any particular methodology, to tell you the truth. 'Silver Blue' took exactly the amount of time to write that it takes to sing it, and 'Prisoner in Disguise' took about a year and a half. So you just never know.

The lyrics are always the last thing I do. I always have a recording of basic tracks and maybe some of the lead work. I'll sit back and listen to it, and I'll just concentrate on what kind of feeling it gives me. My goal writing the lyrics is to not disrupt that feeling.

There are no rules to writing a song.

I pick up my guitar and play. Something might come, and then the pen comes out. Then an edit, until something comes out that you're actually satisfied with.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

I most enjoy sitting down with the acoustic guitar and just fiddling around and trying to come up with something like a hook or some sort of melodic line. That's something that I do habitually.

Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music.