Quotes About Music Lyrics

“Work It Harder Make It Better
Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger
More Than Ever Hour After
Our Work Is Never Over
-Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, lyrics and music by Daft Punk”

— Daft Punk

“I liked old time music but what i meant by that was the period from the 1930s through the 60s, nothing before and little after.
 Performers like fats waller, Sinatra, billie holiday, louis armstrong, rosemary clooney, ella, sammy Davis Jr, dean martin ... If the lyrics weren't stupid. Words were important.”

— Jeffery Deaver

“Sometimes we focus too much on the lyrics that we forget to dance to the music. And sometimes we dance to the music and don't listen to the lyrics. Let the rhythm guide you. Let the lyrics inspire you.”

— Alexa Anderson

“Music has always been the greatest expression of mortal philosophy," continued Lucky. "The path to enlightenment is found in the lyrics of Spinal Tap.”

— A. Lee Martinez

“Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.”

— Stephen Sondheim

“When I was growing up, I didn't really know much about being popular or cliques or anything like that. In elementary school and middle school, you start to kind of realize what it's all about. There are cool kids, and then there's you, and you're just trying to figure out where you fit in.I learned a lot about acceptance and rejection,Those are the themes that you'll find spread throughout my music and weaved in throughout all of the lyrics. I really know what it's like to be accepted, and I also know what it's like to be rejected. And those are lessons I learned in Wyomissing.”

— Taylor Swift

“I was listening to all those lyrics and trying to take in everything that was happening. I was completely excited. It was one of the greatest times that I had listening to music.”

— Jay McShann

“You have the ability to write melodies and to put lyrics that mean something: to speak about life and what people are going through in their every day ups and downs, the good times and the bad times. Country music has always talked about life, I think; that's what I've always loved about it.”

— Jimi Westbrook

“Music critics think of lyrics first and don't consider melody but so many songs are lyrically depressing but musically great, and that's why they become classics.”

— Aloe Blacc

“Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.”

— Robert Lopez

“I don't know if it's my music, my lyrics, my sound, and knowing the music business the way I do-all I can say is, my career has lasted way longer than I expected.”

— Barry White

“My music and my lyrics are essentially emotional postcards.”

— Sarah McLachlan

“Music is very nebulous, and you can conjure up a lot of moods with music. But lyrics - they're a lot more tangible. They're much more specific. And you want to say something meaningful and creative and artistic and that tells a story and that takes people someplace else.”

— Sarah McLachlan

“My interest in the theater led me to my first writing experience as an adult. My husband David wrote the music and lyrics and I wrote the book for a children's musical, 'Spacenapped' that was produced by a neighborhood theater in Brooklyn.”

— Gail Carson Levine

“Making lyrics feel natural, sit on music in such a way that you don't feel the effort of the author, so that they shine and bubble and rise and fall, is very, very hard to do. Whereas you can sit at the piano and just play and feel you're making art.”

— Stephen Sondheim

“For me, making music just starts with a simple melody, and lyrics will come sometime after that.”

— Leon Bridges

“I've always wanted my lyrics to say something meaningful and, you know, you always want to tell a message with your art. So yes, as I continue to write music, I will write about things that are real and things that I feel aren't written about a lot.”

— Hayley Kiyoko

“I dabbled a little bit in the whole music thing but I've always thought about Bernie Taupin, who is Elton John's lyricist; Elton John is the great melody and song writer but Bernie Taupin is the one who writes all the lyrics. I don't write lyrics, and I never wanted to be in the music business if I was just going to be a puppet in it.”

— Carmen Ejogo

“Music doesn't have to have lyrics; it doesn't have to be a particular type of music - it has the ability to bring out really strong and hopefully good emotional reactions in people.”

— Tom Scholz

“When I was younger, I was able to write with music playing in the background, but these days, I can't. I find it distracting. Even when the music is just instrumental or has lyrics in a language I don't understand, the clash between the voices in my head and the song can be very disorienting.”

— Daniel Alarcon

“There is no gender to my music. There's no male or female voice, no trite lyrics or poetry. It's much more abstract, so it lives with you longer.”

— Yanni

“I'm not crazy about country-western music. But the lyrics are good.”

— Alice Cooper

“I was totally involved in Bobby's World from the time we started the idea to sitting with the artists on how he would look, to the script meetings, the music, the lyrics, the songs.”

— Howie Mandel

“The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.”

— Brian Eno

“My second record I used a producer, which was frustrating in a way, because I think a lot of the punky spirit and provocative nature of the lyrics didn't come across - the music was pretty.”

— Jewel

“Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music.”

— Carly Simon

“I got a little bit lost in the writing process: like, that moment in the 'Fight Song' music video where I'm throwing the crumpled paper on the bed, that was really true life. I was filling journals with different possibilities of lyrics for the first verse. And none of them felt right.”

— Rachel Platten

“Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.”

— Jason Robert Brown

“I don't even know if I always entirely get what I'm trying to say right away with lyrics. I like a lot of things that are more subtext. I grew up mishearing lyrics my whole life, but somehow there's so much more, too, that's implied in vocal delivery and the music itself and the gestural quality of it.”

— Kim Gordon

“One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those musicians and myself.”

— Lisa Loeb

“It's no longer necessary to slave over the vocals. I don't sing the lyrics until I write them, and singing is the very last thing I do. I record the entire track, and then I worry about lyrics and vocals. The music will suggest where the words are going to a certain extent.”

— Todd Rundgren

“Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

“It's very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don't mean to say it's very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that's my taste in music - my taste in chord progressions and melodies.”

— Zooey Deschanel

“It is possible for music to be labeled "Christian" and be terrible music. It could lack creativity and inspiration. The lyrics could be recycled cliches. That "Christian" band could actually be giving Jesus a bad name because they aren't a great band. It is possible for a movie to be a "Christian" movie and to be a terrible movie. It may actually desecrate the art form in its quality and storytelling and craft.”

— Rob Bell

“Lights are to drama what music is to the lyrics of a song. The greatest part of my success in the theatre I attribute to my feeling for colors, translated into effects of light.”

— David Belasco

“Do I start with the lyrics? No. Quite honestly, it's the opposite. I generally get the melody first - I kinda fiddle around on the guitar and work out a melody. The lyrics are there to flesh out the tone of the music. I've tried before to do things the other way around, but it never seems to work. Obviously, I spend a lot of time on my lyrics, I take them very seriously, but they're kinda secondary. Well, equal, maybe. I think sometimes that if you write a poem, it should remain as just a poem, just ... words.”

— Iron & Wine

“The danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of getting stuck doing the music. When I make an album, I write music, I write lyrics, I come up with the visual design, etc. I get to do all of that stuff.”

— David Grubbs

“I can't write - out of all the things it takes to make music, lyrics are the thing I'm by far the shittiest at.”

— Jay Watson

“I am a big Brian Eno fan - the first few Brian Eno records are just absolute gibberish and he came up with a lot of lyrics by writing down loads and loads of random sentences and streams, and I find meaning in that music, even though he'd probably say it's absolute gibberish.”

— Jay Watson

“The way I feel about music
any song, any style
is that there is no right and wrong, only true and false. If the music and lyrics are conceived out of honesty and if the production of the song goes along with its original message, then what has been expressed is art, regardless of what anyone's opinion is of it. So things are a lots impler if you just tell the truth.”

— Fiona Apple

“I used to play guitar for myself and write lyrics and listen to different styles of music.”

— Rokia Traore

“I've always felt that dark lyrics with dark music is pretty useless. Maybe that's a strong statement - not useless, but for me, it's just boring.”

— Andrew Bird

“So when you're talking about lyrics in the context of music, it's not just about what the words mean, and what you were thinking about when you wrote it. It's not cognitive in that same way. It's almost like music turns words into touch, which is hard to describe, like the feeling of your shirt on your back. It's a pretty delicate thing to try to put into words. You just feel it.”

— Mirah

“When you're younger and a little more innocent, you write whatever [lyrics] comes naturally. But as you get used to writing you try to steer the sound and music to different music and throwing in the "kitchen sink" of sorts into the music. With that way, you end up putting in much more than before and you could even make much more next time around.”

— Steve "Lips" Kudlow

“I really enjoy writing lyrics, I enjoy harmonies and I enjoy hearing the organic side of production because I have to do so much non- organic for a living for other artists, it's just a break for me, for my ears and it confuses people that think my music is supposed to sound like the stuff I do for my day job, but that's just people that don't know me.”

— Butch Walker

“If I hadn't had Freddie Mercury's lyrics to hold on to as a kid I don't know where I would be. It taught me about all forms of music ... it would open my mind. I never really had a bigger teacher in my whole life.”

— Axl Rose

“As a songwriter, I don't rush. I may sit on lyrics for two years before the music hits.”

— Ben Harper

“When there are no lyrics there are many parts of the imagination that can fill in the meanings of the music, so I strongly believe that it can be more powerful at times.”

— Tom DeLonge

“I usually have a song in my head. I'm thinking music, I'm thinking lyrics. Music helps me get to those moments. The moments between the moments.”

— Charlie Sheen

“Walt Disney was a great believer in the use of song to convey story. He was primarily a storyman & story-driven songs were his 'pets.' He always asked what was going on with the song - he hated 'singing heads.' He loved learning about character & motivation thru music & lyrics.”

— Richard Sherman