Tommy Shaw Quotes

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

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.

I write lyrics based on music, on a musical flow, and what sounds good at the time.

I get mad about something, and then I have this melody in my head, and then afterwards, the lyrics come.

Sometimes I start with a great title or idea, sometimes a great melody will run through my mind; but the higher percentage of the time, the words and music pretty much come at the same time.

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

I tend to write at the piano, but usually the melody and lyrics come first. Like, I'll be in the shower, and I'll start singing, and the melody and the lyric will just come out. Then I'll quickly try to finish the shower, try to remember it, record it on my phone and save it for the studio.

Sometimes I can't sleep 'cause I can't get a melody or a beat out my head, so I just have to wake up and, like, record it on a voice note.

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.

I usually sit around with the guitar in reach and grab it when I get an idea. Sometimes it lasts five minutes, and sometimes it lasts all day.

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.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

I really have to be in a specific headspace to even begin to illuminate an idea that would create another Bon Iver record, and I'm just not there.

Whenever I start writing, I try to put together songs that feed the feeling of the movie.

I'd say almost that words come first, melody second.

I'm not the sort of chap who can sit down and write music. When it comes, I'm happy.

I'm writing all the time. I want to do this forever. I want to have a box set someday. I can't stop. The day I stop being inspired to write songs, I'll go sit on the beach - until I become inspired again.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

I write all my hooks.

I think about it as not so much 'I need to get it out of me,' it's not that my thoughts are poison, I just want to write good music.

When I write songs, it happens very quickly, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes, and I draw inspiration from everything.

It's not that I'm trying to write another '7 Years' or a new version of 'Mama Said.' Songs just kind of come out of nowhere, and you need to catch them when they do.

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

Some of the songs come so fully, it's like they are pre-packaged. There have been a couple that came in the middle of the night. And I thought, jeez, I'll never forget that. And went back to sleep, and it was gone. You'll hear something years later that another songwriter that you respect writes, and you go, jeez, I think that was the remnants of that song that got sent to me.

When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff. But there's this thing that happens when the song first comes out, that sort of magic when it first comes out of the ether, and you can't even really explain where it comes from. That happens so much with music, and people understand that with music. But I really think that a lot of movie and TV should be the same way.