Sometimes you try a song and people don’t respond, or you tell a story and you just hear crickets. But when you play thousands of shows, you start to refine stuff. – Harry Connick, Jr.
Yeah, but on the U.S Tour we threw a new song into the set almost every night. Ofcourse, you can’t do too many new songs every night as they’ve never heard it. – Glenn Tipton
The one album I can’t live without is called ‘Cumbolo’ by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there’s one in particular called ‘This Train.’ I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm. – Idris Elba
That song has the full extent of my mandolin abilities; I’m not a good mandolin player at all. – John Fogerty
I call it sacred geometry. When everything’s just right and it feels really balanced, so that when it unfolds to the next part, you feel totally familiar and at ease within the song. – Jason Mraz
‘I’m Yours’ was written effortlessly in about 20 minutes’ time, and I honestly thought it was more of like a kids’ song, and I didn’t do anything with it for years. – Jason Mraz
It’s pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn’t get accepted. I’ve written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven’t actually ended up in their films, but then you’re left with a song forever. – Jenny Lewis
When I write a song, I tap into the emotion and the feeling and then I use the emotion to write the words. It’s the opposite when I act. I use the words and tap into the emotion. – Jill Scott
I’m a producer first, and I know music, so I can jump on any song, whether it’s pop or urban, without changing me. Whatever I do, I’m gonna make it classic. – Juicy J
It’s different for every song. But for ‘Say Something,’ I think it was Chad who had an idea on guitar, and I had an idea on piano for different songs, and we just married them together. We bounce things off each other constantly and kind of massage all these ideas into a three and a half minute pop song. – Ian Axel
I was just in the middle of singing a song about how broke we were and now my cell phone rings. – Joel Madden
I had this revelation, you are a lot better at the between-song stuff than you are at the song stuff. That was devastating. And I usually find devastating things to be pretty valuable. – J. Tillman
The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we’d just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot. – James Iha
‘Wild Horses’ is my favourite Stones song. It’s so beautiful. I don’t mind that it was written for Bianca. – Jerry Hall
Every song I put on a record could be a single and I just pack my bags for it… and the minute it takes off, I’m not gonna be home for a while. – John Mayer
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. – Jakob Dylan
Both Springsteen and Michael Jackson, who had these huge productions, could always scale them back down to just a song and a melody. All of that influences me. I also try to be a fictional writer, and sometimes I get close, but the things that resonate the most with me – and with everyone else – is what’s real. – James Bay
People try to keep their past, like kind of holding on to their past. Every Springsteen song talks about that. – John Cusack
A lot of Woody Guthrie’s songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song. – John Mellencamp
In a way song writing can almost be detrimental, because suddenly you find an outlet that is a kind of cheating. You don’t need to have direct communication. You can say, ‘I can’t describe it to you, but I will record it and send it to you.’ – James Blunt
Someone like Katy Perry – I like her writing because I listen to music as a songwriter. I like a lot of her songs – like, ‘Firework’ is a song that I think I could write. – Jimmy Cliff
If you’re in a bar and a certain song comes on and the vibe is just different, it evokes the kinds of things that you want to feel, and if music can do that it’s a very special thing. – Julian Casablancas
I’m not blowing my own trumpet here, but I made a rap song 20 years ago with Afrika Bambaataa. – John Lydon
Paul McCartney and John Lennon would often write a song a day, so I have the same workmanlike philosophy. – Jason Mraz
I’ve had lots of friends who’ve gone through ‘Battlefield’ situations in their relationships, so when I was singing the song I put myself in their position and tried to imagine what they were going through. I got so, so into it and I think you can tell. – Jordin Sparks