I'm not inspired by songwriting at all; that took place years ago. I'm pretty well established, as far as my influences go. I don't listen to music anymore. It all sounds the same to me.
I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm damn well gonna do it!
Songwriting is something I really need to work on. I don't have very many songs but I really love it. I would love to be a great song writer some day.
Folk music is not for a select group of people who feel that maybe he taught them about this music and that it belongs to them. It doesn't belong only to them. It belongs to everyone who's interested in the blueprints of good songwriting.
Pop music really is a love and a joy and a science [of songwriting].
I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.
Songwriting is like editing. You write down all this stuff - all this bad, stupid stuff - and then you have to get rid of everything except the very best.
A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.
I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm.
The songwriting was almost like something I did while I was waiting for my daughter to come back.
If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.
For me, songwriting is something that I have to do ritually. I don't just wait for inspiration; I try to write a little bit every day.
The trick to songwriting is writing in a poetic enough way that other people can identify with it.
I would describe my style of songwriting as classic. I learned very early on and have stuck to the core principles of song structure regardless of which genre I'm writing in.
When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
If you are in NYC and you only do one thing culturally go and see Carol Lipnik at Pangea. If you love music and appreciate great songwriting and singing, if you came to NYC to experience magical happenings in tiny rooms that could never happen anyplace else in the world, if you dreamed of intimate nights surrounded by smart, talented, interesting people, this is what you're here for. Now DON'T MISS IT!!!!
Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.
Songwriting is a great release. It helps me work through things.
My passion is more in songwriting than. . . in being a star.
Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.