Unconventional Songwriting Quotes

Combining sounds that are from another universe with the classic songwriting structures never gets old for me.

One of the things I did learn from 'The Epic' was that we don't have to feel so much pressure to conform to set formats. A song doesn't have to be three minutes and 30 seconds.

Mike Patton is a genius... It is definitely the hardest music I've ever played.

I started writing songs before I could talk - at three or four. It was in me, and I had to get it out. It was all freestyle, which is how I write anyway. I don't write the words down; I scat and come up with the melody, then the lyrics.

Our first radio single, 'The Stage,' was eight-and-a-half minutes long. Unabashedly, we wanted to push the limits musically, lyrically, and instrumentation-wise.

My songs grow on people - like warts.

I don't think anyone would bat an eye if I wrote a song.

I went back and listened to the first three albums I made and tried to figure out what was special about them, why people keep going back to them. I think it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea if they were going to play it on the radio or anything. All I did was write songs, so that's what I got back to.

I think it's absolutely possible to write a song and go somewhere where no one's been before, uncharted territory. In terms of content, I see limitations where there should be none. I know there are things I wouldn't write about, but that shouldn't be the case. You should be able to make a song out of anything, out of any situation.

I've had a lot of folks tell me that my songs weren't quite country because they didn't really sound like anybody that had come along and done it before me. I felt a little out of place for a while.

I've made my music so that it could be about anything and everybody - whether it's a guy, a female or a goat - and everybody can relate to that.

I don't think songs have to be like these super-#1-smash-hit-sounding songs, because I think it's more important that it's like, 'Hey! This is coming out of me. This is something I connect with. This is something that I like to sing.'

Every Dirty Projectors album is a world unto itself.

I definitely like the oddballs. There's a song called 'Little Thing,' which is the only song that I have recorded that has no words. And it's the one that I get past my critic inside me.

One day, I was just fingering around on the keys of a Fender Rhodes piano, and I came up with this little riff, and all of a sudden, it morphed into a song. It had never been touched by a guitar, which was very weird for us. 'Under the Ground' is the first song I have ever written that had nothing to do with the guitar.

But the one thing I'll always know is that people don't know what they want until they get it. They didn't know they wanted a song about taking a horse to the old town road in 2019. But they did.

With this LP we were all very clear on the approach we wanted to take, which was to do something heavy, but also experiment with a lot of other things we really like.

The radio has so many rules, and songs don't. You don't necessarily write to a rule book unless you're, like, just doing it professionally, which has never been my thing.

Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn't a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn't want to have some contrived composition.

Songs being nine to 10 minutes long? Everyone is scared to to do it.

I wouldn't want to write a song in a pair of sneakers. I think it would be a horrible song.

If I get a song - a good song - I just sing it the way I hear it in my head. If anybody else wanted to add whistles and bells and chains rattling, that's fine. Just not too much. I actually just do things as straight ahead as possible.

My favorite records are not easy - they're not records that reveal everything to you the first time out.

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.

I kind of make music where and when I can, and I guess that's why I collaborate so much.