Lou Reed Quotes

I wrote 'Don't Stop' just like I wrote 'Pumped Up Kicks' - I didn't try to make either a hit. I just wanted to write a song I liked.

I don't believe people when they say their songs have nothing to do with their personal life.

In the music industry, it's pretty easy to make an album just because you want to keep going, like, 'This is the formula.' But the formula is your life. You have to live your life and you have to live it well - that's the formula.

I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.

It's always been about making music. I've never gotten caught up with the trappings. You can't get caught up in the limousines and the chicks. The most important thing is the music.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

If I find myself just not feeling like writing songs anymore, I think I'll drop it. There's enough bad, insincere music out there. I don't need to contribute to that.

Maybe this is wrong, but I feel like I craft my songs carefully enough that I still find that fifteen years after having written one, it still works for me - I'm not cringing.

With some artists, I've noticed that after their songs have been licensed, on their next album you can totally hear they're trying to write a song for 'Grey's Anatomy' and it doesn't work. It's just one of those things that has to feel genuine to last a long time.

I grew up with another pretty darn good writer: Glenn Frey of the Eagles. We were very good friends, and we kind of studied it together.

We lived on a farm in the English countryside, where we wrote a lot of our music. You really were treated like an artist during those days-not like product, which is now the mode.

Most of the time, you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.

A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest or the one that sells the most copies. They're editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I'm trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest.

I wanted to create a body of work that I was proud of. It's come from honesty and integrity, without forcing anything from myself, the ideas had to come instinctively and organically. Whether that translates to people in that way, it's kind of out of my hands now.

When we write songs, we don't ever sit down to write an Old Dominion song. We just sit down to write the best song we possibly can.

You start to compete with yourself when your catalog gets bigger and bigger... I mean, everybody wants the next 'Bless the Broken Road,' but you don't write those every day, so it's difficult.

I'm just gonna keep making good music and continue to stay in tune with the people and with reality.

My process of songwriting comes from a very real place: a place that when you watch 'American Idol' - God bless it, it's probably an awesome experience that these people are having, but it's not a real one.

I'd advise all you songwriters out there, if you're getting into it for the business, go home and get a job digging ditches or something. Get a life. You'll learn a lot more, and you won't write a lot of rotten poetry.

I always felt like I could combine good pop songs that are easy for people to like with a real person and a real mind and integrity.

I didn't sit down and work out other people's material; I've never believed in that.

I think whatever you believe in affects whatever you express, whatever you create. It shapes your morality in some way. But I don't think that's something that you have to shove down people's throats. I'd rather keep it in the background, and I'd rather people came to the music in an unprejudiced way. I'm glad, in a sense, that most people don't know about me, what I do, much. I'd rather they hear the music, and then say, "I wonder what kind of person created this."

I'm not the kind of writer that can wake up and say, "Okay, I'm gonna write a song today," and have that song be the kind I would want to record. The songs of mine that I end up liking are songs that come from real experience. They're like chapter titles in my life.

In the past, I've written my songs and then asked friends if they could record the vocals. I didn't want to use my own voice, because other people have much better voices. I was hearing the music with a voice that I don't have. It was a case of pulling whatever resources I had to get the sound I wanted, but that doesn't take anything away from the authorship. They are songs written by me that sound the way I want them to sound. Whether it's my voice or someone else's doesn't make a difference to the music.

Producing is important because if there is no one making the tunes, there is nothing for the DJs to play, and nothing for the people to dance to.