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.
People know my lyrics; they know the stuff I've written, and it's all about life, love, happiness, and these big euphoric moments. It would always bug me when I'd go to a club, and they're playing some chick on a stripper pole on the monitor behind me. I'm like, 'So that's not what I do - that's the other guy.'
I tend to like simple music. And clever, succinct lyrics. Songs that don't try to be more than they need to to be effective, to stir up something emotionally within you.
One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.
I think of a song in terms of lyrics and stories, and that's what keeps it country for me.
When you have four people writing lyrics instead of one person, the lyrics are going to be a little more broad.
We don't analyze our lyrics.
I'm always writing; my phone is full of ideas - melodies and lyrics and stuff.
To not sing with an orchestra, to not be able to communicate through my voice, which I've done all my life, and not to be able to phrase lyrics and give people that kind of joy, I think I would be totally devastated.
I had only heard about Fall Out Boy a couple months before we contacted him. I heard 'Saturday' and 'Grand Theft Autumn' and thought the lyrics were smart and the singer was insanely talented.
For the record, I am not an admitted homosexual, nor am I a homosexual, though I do know the lyrics to every show tune ever written, which might perhaps account for the confusion.
I wrote the tunes and sang only nonsense words. Then came Moore and dressed them with the lyrics.
I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn't have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn't important it would just be a poem.
We started very slow in America. It was small acoustic shows. We played places like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago and everywhere there has been a great reaction. It has been really lovely. They listen to the lyrics and the melody over there and the reaction has been fantastic.
All of my lyrics are based on the one thing that's never failed me, and that's the Word of God.
But, Eminem... No, I've loved rap for a long time, especially when it got out of its first period and became this gangsta rap, ya know this heavy rap thing? That's when I started to fall in love with it. I loved the lyrics. I loved the beat.
In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.
I write most of my own lyrics for my album and I am helping to produce some of the songs as well.
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.
I feel like I want to write some songs and I don't know how to go about doing it. Usually it's the lyrics that are a problem, and I think I am not really cut out to be a lyricist.
I am a big Pink Floyd fan. That is where a lot of the concept lyrics come from.
Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.
It took me a long time to stumble upon a sound, and I figured out I wanted to kinda sing rapper's lyrics.
The 'sent' folder of my email program is really my biggest inspiration and my biggest source of lyrics. That's where I go to pick up a lot of the lyrics that I'm writing.
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.
I get the music, I get the beats. And I go to the studios and write the lyrics.
I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band - just for fun - when I was 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish.
During 'Torches,' I was more concerned with communicating the spirit of the song than the actual lyrics.
I had Madonna parties; I dressed like Madonna, and I had all of her records because we had records back then. I knew all of her lyrics; I was obsessed with her movies and the whole thing.
I think maybe since there isn't a great deal of access to the mainstream media and people don't understand the language of mainstream media, if you put music out there with lyrics that are loosely political, people absorb some of it and spit it back out.
People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
In rap, as in most popular lyrics, a very low standard is set for rhyme; but this was not always the case with popular music.
I was looking at the setlist backstage and I just said, 'Oh my God, the first six songs nobody's gonna know.' But they all knew the lyrics. It just blew me away.
The thing is, in English I'm able to write the lyrics as I'm making the song, once I'm done with the melody.
'Endless Love' is such a perfect love song for a wedding or for a Valentine, because that is the committed kind of endless love. All the lyrics are perfect.
I just kept it real and had the freedom to do what I want. It's not designed for any age group. It's not made for radio. There are no edits. The whole album contains explicit lyrics but that's because you need it.
