Songwriting is too mysterious and uncontrolled a process for me to direct it towards any one thing.
I feel like songwriting is an experiment in empathy.
I was invited to L.A. when I was 16 for a weekend-long songwriting session by a writer I had met through my voice teacher in Pittsburgh. My first hit, 'Hide Away,' was one of the songs written during those sessions. It was played for a radio rep who then started a new label; the song got a pretty organic start at radio and then took off.
My songwriting process is painful. Songwriting is brilliant. It's a load of fun - when it works. It's really difficult as well.
When I was 13, I started writing songs, and it fell into my lap all of a sudden. I wrote poems and journals, but that's when it switched for me to songwriting. That's when I wanted to do everything. It was like a fire all of a sudden. I started coming to Nashville and moved here when I was 15.
Fifth Harmony as a group represents more confidence, more girl power, more unity. They're anthems, as opposed to confessional songwriting about one person's life when there are five individual women.
Songwriting is such an intricate part of me as an artist and as a person; I couldn't just let someone else do it.
Songwriting wasn't my gift. I think you have to cultivate a gift; you have to practice and develop craft around your gift so that you can execute it in more convenient, efficient ways.
I like songs in all different genres and types. My production and songwriting is everything from pop rock to hip-hop and everything in between.
After two years in the songwriting world, I wrote 'All About That Bass.' L.A. Reid heard it and signed me as an artist.
I don't really know that there's any real rules for songwriting.
I think my favorite thing is songwriting.
My songwriting has evolved, just as I've evolved as a person.
Songwriting has always been close to me.
My lifetime role model and hero is Freddie Mercury of Queen. His songwriting skills, I cannot even approach, but his showmanship, I learned it from videos.
I'm just getting back into my songwriting groove. It's still pretty early. But I don't want to make 'Hero 2.' It's going to be different.
The one thing I'm really the most confident in as an artist is my songwriting ability and ear for pop music. I'm really excited to show that off. It was a side that I wasn't able to show on 'American Idol.'
When a lot of musicians change styles, their songwriting suffers because they want to be different.
I'm the only girl songwriter that fights for a lot of things. I fight for songwriting fees, which record labels want you to shut up about.
I love my complexion, but like so many of us, in the early years at primary school, I grew up thinking that my dark skin wasn't a great thing. I've found freedom in music and songwriting, which has given me a freedom in how I present myself. I'm glad I've got makeup to celebrate that with.
Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.
'Gatekeeper' was sort of my first attempt to put a little bit of a frame and boundaries around songwriting, and try to figure out a way to approach it that had a sort of end result in mind. I haven't written many like that.
Music is entirely subjective. I was thinking that for myself, for songwriting and what I like to listen to, to help motivate me as a songwriter, as a musician, there are certain things I lean towards and certain things I don't.
I actually went to an Oasis concert. I thought they were a brilliant songwriting band.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
The songwriting has never really stepped forward from the '50's.
Linkin Park has been a band for such a long time, for me, in my eyes. I was 16 years old when I first heard them. I heard 'Hybrid Theory,' and I was floored at what I was listening to. It was angry yet melodic, it had hip-hop and it had - it was just different, good. Good songwriting.
It all comes together. It's - that's the way it's always worked for me with songwriting.
When I work with artists, I give them a general guideline of what my vision is. Then they're going to speak their minds on how they view it, too. The song that defines 'Neon Future' the best is the title track. I wrote that with Luke Steele of Empire of the Sun. It's through his words. We had an amazing songwriting session together, connecting.
My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.
In songwriting, I needed language. And I always believed in singing about what I do.
There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting.
There are no rules when it comes to songwriting, so I'd turn Carter family songs from the 1930s into pop songs.
To have John Mellencamp compliment my songwriting? That was unreal.
For me, songwriting is something like breathing: I just do it. But that doesn't mean you're fantastic.
The rule of songwriting: say what you want to say, say it again, say it a different way, then say it again.