Joan Armatrading Quotes

I've always had good songs, it's the great songs that are difficult to find.

Writing a song is actually quite easy. Writing a good one is very, very difficult.

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.

I've written a lot of songs in the last couple years, but writing a lot of songs doesn't always mean writing good songs.

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.

I write the best songs I can.

Johnny Andrews can make me fly with his ideas for new songs. It has always been a pure pleasure to write with him.

There's such a huge difference between a great arrangement of riffs and a song. Sometimes the two can be the same. But the difference is a song doesn't necessarily need a riff, whereas a riff doesn't necessarily mean you've got a good song on your hands.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

I guess a good song is a good song is a good song, ya know.

Songs are not better just because they're emotionally honest. To write a song well, you have to put some work into it and grind it out.

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

I think I always had a musicality, and I think I could tell a good song from a bad song. And I would appreciate hearing something that was new to me.

The music is the main thing and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.

I'd rather sing a good lyric written by someone else than one of my own that is terrible.

A good idea for lyrics and a melody to expand on.

Keep in mind, you can use Auto-Tune and you can know how to work it perfectly, but you still have to know how to write a good song.

Mr. Fantasy was the only song that was scribbling on a piece of paper.

I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.

If you write 50 songs, you're bound to write at least a dozen good ones.

For people who write songs, it's a gift you're given. You become good at the craft, but you're given the gift.

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.

If I don't feel it when I'm sitting there, if it doesn't give me the feeling I got when I heard 'Pony' or 'So Anxious' or 'In Those Jeans,' I scrap it.

It's not just music. To me, it's songwriting more than anything. A lot of people say it's expression, but to me, it's more than that.