Lyric Quality Quotes

As a lyricist, I'm really trying to raise my level of quality.

When you write really good lyrics - and sometimes I did! - they are just a joy to sing.

When it comes to lyrics, I just write down a lot of things, and only a very tiny fraction of it, I think, is any good.

The melody seems to have gone to the country. The country music seems to still have melody and interesting lyrics. But pop music, you've got to really listen hard to somebody who's doing a good melody and a good lyric.

I'm particularly attuned to lyrics, and very often a bad set of lyrics will ruin a song for me, while my friends will be just grooving on the music. I don't mean that it has to be about anything in particular, but there has to be some art applied to it, simple or otherwise.

You have to have a balance, and I think that people get upset about Hip-Hop and say that it's dead because there is no balance. It's just all this simple-minded music, and it doesn't seem to be any content, and the dance club music outnumbers the little content there is.

I don't work with anybody on the music, of course. But my God, some of the lyrics that other people have written were so shallow: 'Hey baby this, hey baby that.' I need substance to the words, you know? Give me depth!

I really hate when I do a great song with great lyrics but my voice just don't fit because of the type of beat I picked.

I'd rather sing a good lyric written by someone else than one of my own that is terrible.

Lyrics need to be good, but they don't need to be obvious right away.

I love amazing lyrics paired with amazing melodies.

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.

To sing is to bring to life; impossible if the words are mediocre, however good the music.

I don't like lyrics that are just thrown together, that were obviously written as you went along, or the song was already written and the guy made up the lyrics in five minutes.

Something taken off the page can sound great, I guess. Usually it doesn't. It seems like lately Pitchfork is trying to champion lyric writers more.