Lorde Quotes

I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility.

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 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.

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.

I never really thought about my music being universal. When I set out to write, it was just a feeling that felt good to me. I never thought about being able to reach everybody.

When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.

I've been writing music since 4th grade, and I love putting words together and expressing things in a way that you can move your head to and you can really relate to, because I have a lot to say.

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.

If I don't write a song, I only record it when it's played for me for the first time and I connect to it, am empowered by it, and have a deep connection to the lyrics.

That's my favorite part about songwriting, the way you write a song, and someone else might hear it a different way.

Part of my growth as a producer was not just about making beats but also helping in the process of inspiring the song and making the song the center.

Sometimes when you sing someone else's song over and over again or songs that have been given to you, you're afraid to go out there and write one yourself.

Songwriting has become such a big part of what I do that emotions and the melodies that accompany them blur into one.

I want to relate. I don't want to just rap and go to the next album.

I like to compose, but only for myself. I write my own lyrics and compose the music around them.

I hear a good song and I start thinking, 'Oh shoot. You know there's a story that can be told to this,' and whatnot.

When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out and connect with you. Great songs connect beyond genre and style.

I didn't just sit down and write 'Summer In Kingston' from scratch; it came about from a bunch of songs I already had.

The way I look at it, I'm a songwriter that just happens to play guitar.

The music is something outside myself that's also inside myself... Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain.

As a songwriter, you always want to search for something that's right in front of you that you can twist into something new.

If I don't relate to a song, I won't sing it. The thing is that if I wrote it, I'm always going to relate to it.

Everybody has that feeling when they look at a work of art and it's right, that sudden familiarity, a sort of...recognition, as though they were creating it themselves, as though it were being created through them while they look at it or listen to it.