Al Yankovic Quotes

I try to make all my songs good. I don't ever write one to finish one. A lot of protest songs end up that way, driven by some kind of emotional response.

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.

If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, 'Is that a song?' I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.

When I wrote 'Paradise,' it was going to be an interlude - like a segue from the song before. Then I just added more to it because everyone loved it.

I've already done two cover albums. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to do another, but I just did the Led Zeppelin song for fun, and I thought I could do it kind of quick since songs that I love a lot I can do fast.

My songs are really never titled. Sometimes I call it one thing. then I change it.

I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a song or just say, God, please give me another song. And I just am quiet and it happens.

When you sit down to write something, there should be no guidelines. The main idea is not supposed to be, 'How many different ways can we sell it?' That's so far away from the true spirit of what music is.

I think you always win in storytelling when you let the best creative ideas guide you.

Every song that we wrote for the first album made it. We didn't think about writing a bunch of songs and picking the best ones. We had to just make the best songs we ever wrote.

I don't choose the songs; the songs choose me.

I don't specifically sit down to write a Motley Crue song, so for me, that's how it works. The things that sound like they might be Crue, I put aside on my hard drive and keep them in that pile.

Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process.

'Black Hole Sun' was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.

I think artists should really write more.

The truth is, I do some of my best writing at 3 A.M. while blasting 'Every Time I Die' into my ear drums.

Some of my writing is very subconscious, and that's definitely what happened with 'Body Language' - I looped some basic bossa nova sounds and just started singing.

Action set pieces are my absolute favorite thing to write. I'm pretty much always in the mood to do them, but music certainly helps the process. I usually brainstorm out the dynamics and choreography of a fight to music beforehand - it gives me the little sparks of imagination when I get to the gaps in my own creativity.

I'll listen to a song so much that ideas start to form out of daydreaming. It's as if I'm reverse-scoring the track and building visuals around a specific beat or riff that's grabbed me.

Me and Thugger could make nine songs in a day and then choose which songs we like the most and think is gonna do something. With other people, it's like, we pick one song, and we hope it's the one.

When I wrote 'Grand Illusion,' I was making it up as we went along. I wrote this stuff and tried to do the best job I could.

It's gotta feel natural. I'm always into that, and after awhile, if I am working on a song too long and trying to make something out of it that it's not... it's best just to stop and move on.

A lot of times, somebody will say something and it will give you a good title. So you carry a pencil with you and jot that down. You don't just write a song right quick, though. You fool around and work with it. You have to keep going over and over it and see if you can't write a song that means something.

Even writing verses from my first album, there were songs that I didn't use because I just felt that they weren't really for me. But I think that happens naturally when you write songs. You're in a different mood in every session. There's so many songs out there that could potentially be used by other artists.