Gotye Quotes

Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.

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.

I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song.

Songs are out there - they're waiting to be grabbed. I start with a phrase, musical and lyrical, words like 'I don't think so' and a nice riff. It rolls from there.

I like hooks and choruses, things people can sing to.

I like songs that have lots of different parts in them, an intro, an outro and a bridge.

I think often times if a guitar riff is centered around the chorus or if it follows the chorus, then it often times turns into the actual hook.

When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy.

A rhyme doesn't make a song.

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.

I'm totally convinced I can write the perfect pop song.

Usually, my rhymes are just in my head. I start off with a theme, and once I start rapping and writing and singing, the chorus and all that, it just starts flowing. Then it's done in about an hour! I write a lot of songs.

I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn't have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn't important it would just be a poem.

I love writing songs.

We love great melodies and great songs that have great hooks and melodies, so we start a little bit more on that side as opposed to other people that start more lyric-based. Sometimes we'll do it the other way.

We wanted to sit down and conceptually work out songs.

There is a real formula to writing music, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. It's very formulaic. The subject matter that you can address in pop music is somewhat restricted. It just doesn't allow that same emotive quality that you can put into poetry.

When I'm writing a pop song, I'll just write formulaically, strategically.

I don't know what it is really... I think I'm just good with hooks.

I like lyrics a lot.

I like mantras and repeating things, like in pop music, where you repeat a line over and over again. It's just so beautiful.

I just love catchy melodies.

My first song was called 'Portrait.' It would just be poetry, and I really never understood how to write the structure of writing a song. I just knew the feeling, and I knew it was supposed to break and change at the same part, so that's how I write music.

I think I have always made really beat-driven pop-rock records.

I can't sing, but I'll sing over this chord progression, like, over and over, for however long it takes - sometimes it's, like, two minutes, sometimes it's 20 minutes - until I've found like a hook or something that I'm really happy with. And then, basically, it just like that's my melody, and that's where I start from.