Manu Chao Quotes

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.

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.

You can't write a song out of thin air you have to feel and know what you are writing about.

How does a person create a song? A lot of it is being open to encounter and to be in touch with the miraculous.

It varies, I don't think there is any one set way of writing songs or coming up with ideas, it comes in so many ways you know.

Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song.

But over a period of time It's the melodic things that are in my head all day.

Every song I've written is luck, I think; it's luck - 'How did that just happen?'

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.

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

I've got so much material; like, it feels as if every day I'm coming up with so many riffs.

If you write songs long enough, you run out of material that's original to yourself.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

Sometimes a song can be born in few minutes, if the feeling is right, some other times it can take days.

I don't find the songs; they find me. I just strum my guitar and wait for a lyric to come.

Sometimes a song can take up to a year to write, and because I waited that year and waited to work on it that day, it came up that extra 50 percent.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

People say, "How do you write songs?" I say, "Patience." I may have a track that's hot, but no words. I'll just let it sit for years, because I know they're going to meet. They'll find it.

Any time I write a new song, I am jazzed about it for like 24 hours and then I am over it and want to write another one.

Well, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.

Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.

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

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.

Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.