Jamie Lawson Quotes

When I'm writing with just an acoustic guitar, it can be for anyone.

But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.

There's something about approaching universal truths with the simplicity of the acoustic guitar. You can take it anywhere, and it helps me reach listeners of all ages and walks of life.

Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.

I'm making a record that's half stripped down acoustic which is the way I perform a lot and half of it is very produced. It's really hard to keep music simple but I was trying to keep it simple and focus on one or two instruments and vocals.

Probably my two biggest musical influences were the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, in chronological order. Both of them have had a very simple-sounding musical style that's actually quite complex as far as popular songs are concerned.

With pop, it's pretty much straight up and down. It has to be simple. Everybody has to be able to walk down the street and be able to sing it.

I love the notion of a dude sitting there with an untuned guitar tapping his foot and just singing his passion out; that's what got me into music in the first place.

I do try to structure everything in a way that's very much like a pop song. I try to keep the arrangements really simple, just to make everything essential.

I'm very much of that old-school mentality of believing that if it works with an acoustic guitar and a vocal, then it should work within any format - and especially when most of my live work is just guitar and vocals, so it really does have to work with only that.

Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.

For me, a perfect pop song is something like 'This Year,' by the Mountain Goats.

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

I come from a jazzy, acoustic, folky background. Everything has to work with melodies; the words have to have meaning.

I'm used to making songs; that's how I learned to make music. My structures will always be more like pop songs than dance tracks.

We need more pop songs and more empowering songs.

As a pop musician, as someone who makes songs, the best ideas are the simplest. They come, and that's the lightning bolt moment.

I was definitely drawn to the mythology of one man, one voice, and one guitar.

To be honest, the acoustic stuff's my favorite thing to do.

I don't think writing open-ended lyrics is necessarily an important part of writing good pop songs.

What I love is when I play gigs, it's just me and a guitar - very simple, very direct and intimate, and you hear every lyric, and you hear every detail.

The Delmore Brothers is hit music - very, very popular - and it still retains that rural flavor and simplicity. I always think of it as family music, really, because families sang it.

I find it really easy to write on the bass, because you kind of get straight to the point: you do lyrics and melody without thinking about decorating the song until after you've finished it.

Every single song on 'Torches' was a little self-contained pop song, so there wasn't any fat on the songs; there wasn't a lot to cut.

Destiny's Child's harmonies remind me of Earth, Wind & Fire.