Frank Stella Quotes

Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last. Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

When the idea comes, I often can't remember where it came from. I remember very little about writing the first series of Hitchhiker's. It's almost as if someone else wrote it.

I think, there are a couple of songs. I'm really proud of How far I'll Go. I literally locked myself up in my childhood bedroom at my parents' house to write those lyrics. I wanted to get to my angstiest possible place. So I went method on that.

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

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.

When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff. But there's this thing that happens when the song first comes out, that sort of magic when it first comes out of the ether, and you can't even really explain where it comes from. That happens so much with music, and people understand that with music. But I really think that a lot of movie and TV should be the same way.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't. And clearly the ones who wrote music were more superior human beings in his mind. So he kind of nudged me and sort of prodded me into it. I picked it up slowly. Then I learned more about chords and harmony and I just kept adding to that. One of the great things about having good players in your band is that you just ask them questions. You can pick up some good information that way.

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve. ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing.

Classical music is this music that was written by a bunch of dead people a long time ago.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint.

There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.

There's this whole idea that you've got the blues and you're going to write. Bullshit. When I feel really bad, all I want to do is sit in front of the TV with the remote control and check out.

The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.

I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

I am pretty sick with myself! It seemed a pretty good idea at the time. Around the time I turned 30, I started to feel very creative, more creative than I had been before which is good and I like that.

When I write a song today, basically it goes on the stage tomorrow. That's the way it works. You cannont interrupt your consciousness; it all comes from the subconscious, it can happen anywhere. It could be in a telephone booth.

What I ended up doing was kind of crafting an idea for a story, presenting it to a writer - a dear friend of mine, Brad Mirman - and he ended up writing a beautiful script. I should've done that a lot earlier.

If it came back I would be thrilled. I would be delighted to write more songs. I need them now because I want to make an album and I have to depend on other people's music, which I've done for years. But still, it'd be really nice to be able to sprinkle it with my own.