Stephan Jenkins Quotes

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.

I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.

I think my best songs come from me sitting at a piano, bashing my head against a brick wall for hours and hours on end to get one good melody.

I'm always good for starting a bit of a tune and the first verse, but after that I just can never go anywhere. It takes me years, that's why I'm so slow.

I'm probably the most proud of "Mrs. Potato Head," because I had that idea in my head for so long, and I tried writing that song one time and I just couldn't tell the story the way I wanted to, and I couldn't figure it out.

I try to write a lot and my process is kind of back and forth. I procrastinate a lot so when I do sit down to write, I'm pretty lazy at it. And it's such a frustrating thing sometimes - writing - when you don't do it all the time, you get that thing in your head that you have nothing to talk about and you can't write songs.

Writing songs has always been hard and easy. It's not always easy when you want it to be, and then sometimes it's just like turning on the faucet. That's just the nature of it.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

My songwriting process is painful. Songwriting is brilliant. It's a load of fun - when it works. It's really difficult as well.

I get so fed up with the making of an album taking over my life - it's all I can think about or talk about. You find yourself in a rut and lacking inspiration and it's hard to get out of that because I'm working alone in the studio.

The thing I ran up against was everybody wanted a song so fast. It took me two years to finish 'Touch Me in the Morning.'

I think that's just part of how it is with making art. Sometimes you're just flooded with ideas, and then other times you're questioning all the ideas you ever had before, and everything is just... lame.

Songs seem to take me a long time. I don't know why; they're not especially excellent for taking so long.

I just can't sit down and write three verses and a chorus and a bridge anymore. It just don't find it inspiring.

'Free Mind' was a song written over a couple of years. It was pretty much three different songs that I couldn't figure out how to put together - until one day, when I was in the studio, it kind of just fell into place.

I can only write songs when somebody gives me some water to swim in. Otherwise, I'm a fish on the beach.

When I'm writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.

Sometimes a song can take up to a year to write, and because I waited that year and waited to work on it that day, it came up that extra 50 percent.

I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.

Songs are puzzles - you get an intro, or maybe an end, but you gotta fill in the rest. Sometimes they come easy and sometimes they're a pain in the ass.

Sometimes the entire thing comes out in one burst. Sometimes you hack away at a thing for years before you get something that satisfies you.

Well, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.