Mark Lanegan Quotes

I never write from concept. The beat is the beginning, and then I fill in the rest of the song into what it should be.

I can write a song in about an hour if it's a simple country song.

When I'm recording, I usually just mumble and hum a melody and then fill the words in as I go.

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 probably wrote three-quarters of the songs without an instrument in my hands.

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.

You just don't wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.

The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

We love great melodies and great songs that have great hooks and melodies, so we start a little bit more on that side as opposed to other people that start more lyric-based. Sometimes we'll do it the other way.

My songs pretty much revolve in my brain most of the time - usually, whatever's coming next.

When making the first album, I think I wrote a song about every six months. The first album was so much about the vocals carrying it.

I did co-write 'Moment of Forever' with Danny Timms. He wrote the melody, and I just did the words.

It takes me, like, half an hour to write the lyrics for a song. They just come out.

It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting.

I just hear a beat and start mumbling words. I just hear sounds and rhythms, and it just kind of comes intuitively. Formatting a song, figuring out a flow, how I respond to the beat.

I find it really easy to write on the bass, because you kind of get straight to the point: you do lyrics and melody without thinking about decorating the song until after you've finished it.

When I write songs, it happens very quickly, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes, and I draw inspiration from everything.

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

I always find that, when it comes to writing songs, if the melody and the chords are working, we're 90 per cent there.

I can't force myself to make up a song. Music comes to me naturally.

Sometimes I start with a great title or idea, sometimes a great melody will run through my mind; but the higher percentage of the time, the words and music pretty much come at the same time.

I don't know about the time those songs were written. But he was jamming with someone in Colorado or San Francisco, and I'm sure he was working on the lyrics right up to the show because they were really relevant for the situation.

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.

When I was writing 'Shotgun,' it's one of the first songs that's come to me as an image.