Hillary Scott Quotes

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

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

Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else's house!

There is no formula to it. Writing every song is a little journey. The first note has to lift you.

A lot of times Mick will play me different things, or I'll listen to a cassette, and out of twenty ideas or whatever, I'll find two or three that are just blowing me away, and we'll start working on them right away.

Some of my writing is very subconscious, and that's definitely what happened with 'Body Language' - I looped some basic bossa nova sounds and just started singing.

I try to imagine what the greatest song I could ever write would sound like, and then try to do it.

Sometimes, the better writing comes when the song speaks through me and tells me what the song wants to say.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

Oh yes, much, because music is just something that comes to you. You don't question it.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it.

That's the cool thing, when I get to work with people I love. The biggest has probably been Kris Kristofferson on 'Bloodworth.'

I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.

That's always been a dream for me, to be able to collaborate and make music with the people that inspired you to make music.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

When I started to write a tune, I just wrote the nearest at hand, which was what was happening in my own life.

It has been a pleasure to play with all these artists. Pretenders was a real highlight, but also Damon, aka Badly Drawn Boy, Sinead... Ian Brown... all of these people I learn from and love to work with.

I always had to wait until something hit me, and I could write it. But when I would cut an album, to me it represented the time that I spent since the last one. Just the way I was looking at the world.

The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn't that bad! The writing came natural to me.

Sometimes I feel like I finish a song, and there's another song that I have to write in response to that song. Each is like its own separate feeling, its own separate universe.