M. Shadows Quotes

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

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

When I write a song, I get the melody right first, and then hopefully I can back it up with a lyric that has to respect the melody.

I love writing songs. One of the toughest things is structure; it just works when you use verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. And as soon as you become aware of that formula, you start to have a bad conscience when you write with that particular structure.

I think there are some songwriters who are just brilliant who can write and then I think there are some songwriters who can like me I have a problem writing chorus lyrics but I can write a song in a story like that.

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.

I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.

Sometimes, for me, lyrics are derived from poems that I'm working on, and they kind of cross back and forth between the two.

Obviously when you write songs you've got to record them, but just writing the songs is one of my favorite things to do.

I guess I started writing poetry and stuff and then decided to set it to music.

I have a hard time making a linear-idea song, because that's not the way my thoughts work.

I would write poems and think up melodies to them later.

I was writing poetry, and the Mountain Goats was an outgrowth of that.

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.

Yes, basically, like you said, I'll work out a chord pattern and work out the lyrics over that.

But there's a thin line between songwriting and arranging.

I'm always writing something. There's always some structure sitting around someplace. There's always things on the computer, things scratched on score paper, legal tablets full of lyrics. It's never not buzzing around me all the time. I'm always doing it.

It's hard to write a song about reality because reality doesn't rhyme.

It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.

I sit down and draw from my lyric book. I sit down and start looking through it and see if there is anything that strikes me that I've written.

I'm not a natural songwriter.

I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.