P. J. Harvey Quotes

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.

Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.

Sometimes when I'm writing a song I'll get carried away with production when I'm only on the first verse, and that sacrifices the songwriting.

Being a producer is a very different experience than writing my own songs.

New songs are why artists go on the road. That's why I go on the road. It's a three-prong play. Writing: You're intrigued. Recording: It brings it to life. And then you want to share it.

When I was first writing, I used to sit at the piano and play songs - I'd write one or two a night. It was my hobby. At some point, it then became a process that was mainly done within the context of the studio, and writing became part of the recording process.

Once I've written a song, I sometimes refine them.

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

When you first start writing a song, it's fun, then when you start recording it, it's fun, but by the time you've finished recording it, you're sick of it.

It's a very organic process, and it has a specific order to it. I love to write, and once you've written, then you arrange. After the arrangement, you record it, and then you tour it.

'Float On' was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.

Usually I write the songs at home and then I bring them in to the band; when we play them as a band, that's kinda how we figure out the feel of how they're going to be presented on the record or live.

With 'Light,' I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first - they were written before the music.

All my writing takes place during the recording of the master tapes. I never do have songs when I start up an album. I actually write them while I record.

I really write at home on my own, and the demos themselves are very similar to the final recordings in a lots of ways.

What happens with writing a song and demoing it, for me the demo always becomes the master.

For every album we worked on, I brought in reels of tape of somewhere between fourteen and eighteen songs - some of them completed, with lyrics and melodies, some of them basic tracks. Things came out of those products. Like, for 'Hotel California', I think I had a reel with sixteen songs on it.

There is plenty of people I'd love to collaborate with, would love to produce with, would love to write songs with.

The fate of a song is often established in the first 15 minutes of writing.

Albums, with me, have never had an easy birth. Especially when all the songs are self-written songs.

If you wanna write a song, ask a guitar

The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio...well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else.

Blending is just like writing lyrics or finishing up the song, rearranging and arranging.

Everyone's [ me, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty] equally involved in all the writing. Normally we'll start with a sample or a drumbeat, or a synth sound or something like that, and that will spark the initial idea. And then we'll write an instrumental sketch of a song, and then we put on a nonsense vocal melody, which is always my favourite bit because it obviously sounds amazing.