John Lydon Quotes

I don't think I approach my songs differently from other artists. You get a big picture of it, and you imagine the song and hear and feel it, and that big picture is like a snapshot, and it comes to you as fast as it takes to click a camera.

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.

The melody will tell me what the song should be about, the tone of the song. That's when the intellect comes in. Because I have a list of possible titles and concepts, and I expand on that.

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.

I really, really like writing songs.

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

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

I wouldn't sit down and work at writing a song like a novelist or something.

The creative process of composing music has always fascinated me.

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

I don't sit down to write a song, per se.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

Ever since I picked up a bass, I've written songs.

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

I don't have any particular methodology, to tell you the truth. 'Silver Blue' took exactly the amount of time to write that it takes to sing it, and 'Prisoner in Disguise' took about a year and a half. So you just never know.

Because if you've got the wit, you can make anything into a melody, ultimately.

There are no rules to writing a song.

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.

The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it'll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I'm telling. Then I start building little bridges - word bridges - to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end.

We just wanted to write a bunch of songs that we thought were good songs.

I don't think I'm a great songwriter, but I think I've learned a lot about it, and I don't think there's any one way to do it. I don't think I can control it at all. I can just kind of hope that it happens.

My songs pretty much revolve in my brain most of the time - usually, whatever's coming next.

Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.

I've finally figured out how to make a Rodney Crowell record, and that's let it be, leave the mistakes.

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.