Eminem Quotes

I've been writing music since I was about eight. I would write sporadically. I wrote a lot of music in high school. I guess the oldest song on the record ("I Thought I Saw Your Face") is about eight years old. It's the old "I had my whole life to write my first album and six months to write the second one." I did, to some degree, but actually, a lot of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote really recently. So it varies.

I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.

Progression is important. I'm always going to play music in the general vein of rock'n'roll, but when I started I was very much associated with the West Coast lo-fi thing and I didn't want to get anchored in with anything that was just in vogue for the time being.

I enjoyed singing, I loved song writing, I loved recording. All those things that involves with creating music was great.

When I used to write songs, especially on my own, it was just me and a guitar.

I write my own lyrics completely on my own. Sometimes I have people helping me with concepts or like choruses and stuff sometimes, but mostly I write all my own songs by myself, especially the verses and a lot of the choruses.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

I wrote, in total, about 50 or so songs (finished and unfinished) in the 2 and a half years leading up until this moment, and trying to decide what songs to include on the Mini-Album was super difficult, because there were so many different sound/mood roads I could have gone down. But, after going through everything, these tracks seemed to fit together and communicate a similar sentiment and mood the best.

I maintain that the best song is the one that ends up on the album. So whether I've written it or I haven't, I'm very comfortable with both.

I love to play music, and this is fun, and let's record this stuff in a way that we both like. That was exciting enough, so we just recorded it. There was no business in it until the very last minute, really. It was really as much of an extension of me writing the songs in my bedroom as it could possibly be.

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

With every song, all the elements have to work. First, the beat has to be great - you start there. You start with the music, and then the ideas follow. Then you start thinking of rhymes, and then you record it, and sometimes - this happens to me a lot - it doesn't come out as good as it did in my head when I first wrote it.

Whenever I wrote songs - particularly back then - it would always be for a particular artist.

My dream many years ago would've been to continue to write and record songs in record/album form for years to come, but now records aren't what they were then - and so it doesn't actually feel very good to make a record of songs.

People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and sunshine and so on...like 'California Girls' which was a hymn to youth.

Some songs started from a bass line, some started from having the full lyric and Jim, my drummer, who's also the first guy I've been in the studio with him since 16, sometimes he'd have an idea and I'd put a lyric to it and then the track evolves, there's no set way to write a song.

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.

You take all the time to write a song: you have to let it ooze on out by its natural self and that is pretty time consuming. Then you teach it to the band so everybody gets all the parts. Then you rehearse it and road test it, and all that. Then you get to the studio and there is a new guy in the band who calls himself the producer, right? Huh. He either makes it or breaks it usually before nightfall.

We're not the kind of band who writes an order abundance of songs and picks from them, we usually write for the album.

I think the musical evolution I've gone through has come from all the work with the material.

I just make the music, and people have the say. When I'm making songs, I never call them hits.

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.

No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.

So when I was working with Amy Winehouse on "Back To Black," you know, she had all these beautiful songs, incredibly well-written and just her on an acoustic, nylon-string guitar. And she'd play them for me, and then I would kind of drum up my idea of what I thought - make a demo with what I thought the drums should be doing, the guitars - like, quite a crude demo.

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.