Boots Riley Quotes

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

I try to write life and not songs. People live life, and when you write life, you're going to mess around and touch somebody's heart, and they'll relate to you and what you're singing about.

I really do pride myself on being able to help other people tell their stories and bring out the best in them. But I still, every song I'm writing, I still need to relate to it. I still need to find my true self in it, or else it'll feel dishonest. I mean, everything has a queer meaning as far as I'm concerned.

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

I draw inspiration from anything and everybody and that's what country music is to me... real life stories and real life emotions.

My main goal as a songwriter is to make something that inspires people. To write things about my life that people can relate to. Whether it's a whole record or just one song for someone, I hope it can do that for them. Knowing that I have the ability to do that is inspiring to me.

A fantasy film is often improved by some kind of human reality.

The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'

Music is emotional. Your job is to make people feel something. The best way to do that is to sing and speak from something they've personally been through. That's where I write from.

I think every time I can find a story that touches that human nerve, and even sometimes makes you cry, I think that I've found something that I'll like very much.

That's what's amazing about songwriting: you can write a story that everyone connects to.

I want everyone who's listening to know who I am and not just see me as this singer. I want them to feel connected to my story.

I've talked with friends about this: when you write about yourself, that's what people connect to. When you write a sermon or a lesson, that may not reach people. I've learned a lot from people who have been writing about themselves.

I'm always going to be able to touch fans and get new fans because everybody goes through something everyday. I just keep touching different subjects by talking to the streets and reaching out to my fans by telling them a story instead of just giving them music to listen.

I'm inspired by day to day life, things that people go through, things that make people tick. Everybody has a story, so you try to put stories into songs and try to make it as entertaining as possible.

Love stories should be relatable.

A few things I've noticed about myself as a listener, and the music that I relate to and the music that's continued to mean something to me since I was a little kid or a teenager, is that they're songs that tell stories and songs that come from a place of experience.

I think what happens with a lot of writing and art is that specificity ends up being relatable while universality becomes vague.

There's nothing better than a personal story.

Maybe if my songs feel personal, that's very nice. I like that. I take that as a great compliment.

What I write is emotionally honest and truthful as the human experience can be, to make people feel less alone, or at least that's the hope.

I had self-doubt about whether my story was interesting to people. I didn't want to write something that was anecdotal. It was important to me that people would get something out of my book. I want people to read it and say, "Now I don't feel so alone," or "I'm going to remember that next time I'm being an asshole."