Valerie Simpson Quotes

So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.

It's not hard to create a song, but to write a song that's really going affect somebody? That takes a hell of a lot of time.

I've always had good songs, it's the great songs that are difficult to find.

Sometimes when you're writing a song and that song comes into your head, it definitely comes from somewhere, like a real experience.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

The best songwriting comes from being as creative as you can and editing it down to the good bits, essentially.

Even when I don't think I'm writing, I'm writing. There's some part of my brain geared toward making songs up, and I know it's collecting things and I know when I get a moment to be by myself, that's when they come out.

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

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.

Every day you can write a song but some days there is just some magic in the air and something special about the catch; other days you write all day on a song line or idea.

In my songs, I'm not saying something that's never been said before. The have lyrics aren't going to blow people away. It's the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

Sometimes I get a lyric, and the lyric, you know, comes off the page, and goes into my brain and comes out with a melody. Other times, I may create a melody first.

For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

However long the song is was how long it took us to write it.

The moment I wrote my first song, I got addicted.

I'm not like a professional writer with professional skills. Songs kind of come into my head the same way they did when I was a kid. I say I'm an overgrown kindergarten kid. I work on songs.

Songwriting is a burst of inspiration and then a long bit of work and a tremendous bit of desperation.

I write the best songs I can.

There was never an 'a-ha' moment when a spider bit me and I knew I could write songs. For that reason, I don't know if I'm always going to be able to. I want to write songs forever, but it's an elusive thing.

Songwriting has become such a big part of what I do that emotions and the melodies that accompany them blur into one.

When I'm writing, I'm focusing more on just the basic melody and the lyrics.

The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in.

There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.

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.