Songwriting Motivation Quotes

I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.

I don't set out to write a political song. I am not one of those that feels compelled to write about what's going on.

I realized that I started writing songs to make people feel how I felt, rather than just making them feel something. That's not the way I should do things.

Music is entirely subjective. I was thinking that for myself, for songwriting and what I like to listen to, to help motivate me as a songwriter, as a musician, there are certain things I lean towards and certain things I don't.

When I first started writing songs, I was probably about ten or twelve years old, and the first thing you think as a songwriter is, 'Can this be a hit? Can this come out, and people are going to hear the song and like the song, and then they're going to like you, and you'll get famous and rich?' That hasn't changed a bit.

Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'

The only reason to write a new song is because you're tired of the old ones.

If you don't have to write songs, why write them? I've got enough where I don't really feel the urge to write anything additional.

I felt kind of bored at the prospect of writing some more of my own songs because I really wasn't saying what I wanted to say.

I've often said to young songwriters when they want to write with me, 'Let's take a stab at ten songs, and we might get one really good one.'

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I'd written? Yes. There's many of them!

There's only one reason why you write new songs: You get sick of the old songs. It's not that I didn't do anything during the time when I wrote no songs. I was creative, but in another way. I had ideas for songs and collected the ideas.

It's pretty funny to me when I hear people say, 'I write six songs every day,' or, 'I turn out a song a day.' I bet you that's a whole week of bad songs.

As a creative individual, I really go out of my way to avoid the corporate scene in terms of songwriting. If the first question is how much money is it going to make, I'm going to be in trouble anyway.

'Hell Or High Water' was written after the end of a relationship, and I do feel like every Passenger album has the obligatory break-up song.

The thing is, I'm not a prolific songwriter.

I wouldn't start writing songs like 'Name' all the time just because I thought that's what people wanted to hear. I'll write a song in the same vein because it's what I want to write.

There's a whole bunch of unfinished stuff. Then I've got books of lyrics. I find it frustrating to finish a song and not be able to record it... so I don't write a million songs.

You know, when you break it down, 'Broken Vows' is, if anything, more about my parents divorce. And 'Starting Over' was written after I went to a funeral.

It's not that I have resisted songwriting, it's just not something I felt I have had to do. I've just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt 'I have to sing that song'.

As songwriters and artists we get a lot of attention and gratification when we write about the moments that have hurt us, and in turn, sometimes we'll seek out more hurt so we can write more things that people like.

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'

I wrote my songs despite the fact that I was a drunk, not because of it.

I'm not somebody who carries around a notepad and writes songs all day long. I don't imagine everything I think of is worth being in a song. So I tend to collect notes, and I set time aside to go to work and write songs.

That's something that I think as a songwriter you have to ask yourself - why you're doing it. The world certainly doesn't need more songs. Are you doing it just for your ego?