I appreciate a songwriter like Morrissey with so much restraint.
I'm a songwriter, principally, and I was real excited that people liked my songs, but you get a bit of an ego about it.
I have very strong feelings about a lot of things. I am sometimes reluctant to come straight to the forefront with it. You know, first and foremost, I'm a musician. I'm a songwriter.
I always wanted to be known as a songwriter and not just a songbird.
As a songwriter, you tend to develop your own style, your own technique, based around what it is you're trying to write and perform, in terms of your own music. So a way of evolving a guitar style as a songwriter is much easier, I think, than developing a true style of your own just from listening to music or playing other people's music.
I saw Damien Rice in Dublin when I was 13, and that inspired me to want to pursue being a songwriter... I practised relentlessly and started recording my own EPs. At 16, I moved to London and played any gigs I could, selling CDs from my rucksack to fund recording the next, and it snowballed from there.
Little Steven - the songwriter, producer, and arranger - stayed alive doing the 'Lilyhammer' score. That pretty much took up three or four years of my life, and all of my musical energy went into that.
I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.
As a songwriter, you might write every day and throughout the course of a year you might get four songs that are really special.
I'm not really calculated enough or trained enough as a musician or songwriter to create a style in order to please people. Ultimately, I just have to do what I like to do.
I was like, 'Josh Tillman, you are not a songwriter. You are an ape. Stop thinking of yourself as a songwriter.'
I've learned and grown as a songwriter.
I don't think I'm a political songwriter as much as I am just a political person. I think it's in my fabric.
Sometimes when you're a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don't care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.
David Bowie worked with Brian Eno and dressed up in extraordinary clothes, but he was also a brilliant songwriter who captured the thoughts of a generation. He was hugely successful, without compromise.
I think everyone mentions Bob Dylan, but he's someone I just admire so much as a songwriter. I think people write songs, and then there's Bob Dylan songs. He's one step ahead of just everybody else.
Every song I write is autobiographical and is about people, and that's one of the things that gets complicated. You have to decide where's your place as a songwriter.
Irving Berlin was the greatest songwriter of all time. I was in awe of him. But his music wasn't my music. My music was the blues.
