Tom Petty Quotes

As a DJ, people expect a certain sound and a certain danceability for the music. As a producer, I really like to let go of any rules that may exist.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.

I'm disregarding all the rules I've seen as people approach writing music. I'm trying to break them.

My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

It was important for me to remind people that there's no formula... there's no boundary to R&B music.

There are as many ways to write songs as there are songs.

As a songwriter, I'm not necessarily writing about myself or my life.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Sometimes my songs wander off a bit and are not always coherent.

The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

I am so happy that I didn't go to school and I didn't have anyone to tell me how to position my fingers on the piano correctly. And what you do with music and what is the correct way to write it and what is not the correct way to write it.

When you give an artist a canvas, you shouldn't tell him exactly how much paint to put on it, or exactly how sharp the images should be. You should let the artist get going.

There's an open door now more than ever to be making any type of beats that you want.

When you're writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That's the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

It's interesting the kind of freedom the musical form gives you. The rules are out the window. You can get impressionistic without seeming pretentious. Because it's perceived as an inherently accessible form, it gives filmmakers some leeway.

I always like to write the songs, and they get turned loose into the world, and who knows what happens to them. That's the joy of being a songwriter. You get to hear what other people do, interpretation-wise.

I kept hearing all these rules: 'You can't say that in country music.' 'You can't use that kind of beat.' I became so frustrated. It may have slingshotted me, in a rebellious way, toward doing something different.

I just write a song, and it just comes out however it wants to. And some of them are catchy songs like 'Here Comes The Sun,' and some of them aren't, you know.

I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That's what I lived for.

I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.

The good thing about songwriting is you don't have to delineate between what's true and what's fiction; records aren't put on the shelf that way. Books are, movies are, but records aren't.

My ethos is musical freedom: to create whatever I want.