Elizabeth Fraser Quotes

Lyrics are so important, but they're really underrated.

I privilege the music over the lyrics.

Every song has a bouquet, which is the music. If you can put words with something that is really apt, then you've done it.

When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together.

If you can say the lyrics almost like a poem and they stand up, that's a great thing. Some songs have great lyrics and I don't like the melodies, and vice versa.

You'd think, of course, it's about the melody - that's a given. But really, I'm no good at singing a song unless it has a good lyric.

All musicians should write poetry or at least read it if they want to improve their game. Except for people who believe lyrics don't matter.

The classic, quote/unquote, craft of songwriting still works; it still is relevant.

One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there.

'My Life' is not an autobiography. It's just music.

Every song I've ever written always starts with the words because I want the music to be the musical extension of the feelings of the words, and not the words being the emotional extension of the feeling of the music.

I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics.

When I hear the piano played in a compositional way, like in a songwriter's way in a compositional way, there's a certain arc to that that I love.

Lyrics are really important for me.

The popular songs that were written in the 1920s and '30s, '40s and early '50s were written by veterans - mostly men who'd had experience in life. How can you write a lyric if you haven't really lived life?

Composing is what I love most from what I do. Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another.

Words are important to me, but a song can work and function and be a good song with words that are fairly standard. But really great lyrics can't rescue a dog of a song.

With a lot of songs, songs that don't make a good statement, I forget the words.

You don't play around with a good song. You try to just say it right in the proper place, and if you get the music and voice in tune, you'll be all right. That's always worked for me.

In my early years, I was much too ignorant and didn't realize how desperately important it all is, how really important the lyrics are. And for me as a singer, I am a lady who takes the lyrics first.

I could write a dozen different songs with the same three or four chords, but they'd all be entirely different.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

I wouldn't sit down and work at writing a song like a novelist or something.

When I write a song, I want to write something that is really catchy and says something that might actually touch somebody.

People tend to put too much focus on the lyrics. It's not the be-all and end-all of our songs.