Lyrical Craftsmanship Quotes

To a musician or songwriter, your canvas is silence.

I don't think people care about the mechanics of songwriting.

You don't have to be as good a writer to write a song; it's a very different process to writing straight prose. To learn how to write prose takes a lot of years of practice.

Songwriting is best. It's the hardest ... finest ... tightest. It also requires the most discipline.

I'm a great songwriter, but I'm not the most talented musician.

I don't think I ever wrote a song. I can write a lot of jokes, but when I try to write lyrics they're the most direct, non-figurative words, like, 'I like you, I like you,'... and that's it, for the whole song. People would go, 'Ooh, this guy's Dylan or something.' It gives me a lot more respect for songwriters, actually.

Songwriting's never been a natural art for me; it's always been a bit of a struggle.

I said to [Lionel] Richie, "Man, my wife says you must really respect women because you write such beautiful love songs."

I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!

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 feel like a lot of people look at pop music with a very formulaic perspective in numbers and patterns, but an outsider would think that the process is very natural. It is, but there are a lot of times where people treat it like a sport - there are tricks you can pull, different combinations that make something better. I don't really think I approach it that way, but I definitely have a love for the science that is pop song writing.

It takes more talent to write music, but it takes more courage to write lyrics.

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.

Pop music really is a love and a joy and a science [of songwriting].

I was talking to Jackson Browne on the phone. He said, 'I'm the slowest writer in the world.' I said, 'No, no, no. You're the second slowest. It seems the older you get the slower they come. I wonder if it is like that for everybody?' He said, 'It ain't with Don Henley. He seems to be writing more than ever.'"

Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.

I wish Howard Ashman was still alive so I could just meet him and tell him his words are magic. It's so fun to say. He has such great alliteration and paints the most vivid images with his lyrics

I've come to recognize songwriting as something that I do, and I want to be good at that. At that craft, if you like. I want to practice it.

I put a lot of work into my lyrics. Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though.

There are certainly a lot of people - and I won't name names - who are getting by simply on expression. And I guess that's valuable in some sense. But songs are not better just because they're emotionally honest. To write a song well, you have to put some work into it and grind it out.

If there is one thing I think I have accomplished, it's that I always thought of myself as a very literal songwriter, and as I look at some of those older records, I don't hear it now the way I did when I was 20. I think it is undeniable that the songs have become more instantaneously descriptive and literal. I'd like the songs to be more storytelling, but also have the turns of phrase within them that would hopefully distance my writing from the pack. I feel like on those older records there are a lot of attempts at clever turns of phrase.

I really work hard to shape the song so that it's attractive... You don't want to give people the information in an enema.

I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive...And since I'm a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it.

That's one of the things I love about being a songwriter first, last and always, because whether I do it or not, if someone does a great job on it, my work is done.

Pop songs are not as graceful as they used to be. Performers today haven’t gone through the regimen of learning how to write. And of course, everyone wants to own copyrights. Rap culture is interesting and different and has purpose, but it has a non-romantic view of life and of social feelings. There may be a void in that.