Dan Auerbach 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.

Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

I saw I could rhyme words. It came simply to me. But I wrote some pretty horrible songs that I still have on tape.

We start a lot with melodies and instrumentation and trying to figure out good melodies for verses and choruses. We get to lyrics sometimes second, so we'll start humming a melody, finding something, and see where the music takes you as far as lyrics are and what you want to say and go from there.

My main thing is just to keep writing. I've been doing some songwriting that's for my own record, I suppose.

I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

It was a little at a time but I broke out my Walkman and my lyric pad and started writing.

It's really such a personal journey, making a record, but even more so writing the songs.

I keep this crazy notebook of song ideas.

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

Yes, all my songs come from personal experience and relationships.

I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.

I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

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

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going.

I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.

Writing 'Monitor Mix' was a very edifying and inspiring few years.

I don't specifically sit down to write a Motley Crue song, so for me, that's how it works. The things that sound like they might be Crue, I put aside on my hard drive and keep them in that pile.

Beats are really inspiring. They always make me want to write something over them.

As a songwriter, I've always loved to tell stories. But in my band, it was always about what would make sense for a band to put out.

I view making records as a journey.

I'm always interested in writing. I keep music in journals on an everyday basis. I'm always looking for ideas that can be music.