I love great lyrics, and I love the way it could shape a tune into a very unpredictable one, and I also like taking a great melody and putting lyrics into it.
A. R. Rahman
I'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.
Abbie Cornish
I've seen people who like a certain song write on their Instagram what they think the lyrics are - which they aren't. I'm like, 'Oh, that's interesting - you can create your own adventure with some of these songs.' Which is really cool.
Adam Granduciel
I'm not into solos, I'm into lyrics.
Adam Jones
I wanted to write some lyrics that had some meaning to them, lyrics that were meaningful to me and hopefully people can take something from that.
Adam Rich
Hopefully people can look at our band and see that we're a heavy rock band. We're definitely not a metal band, but we're a band that focuses on meaningful lyrics and melody.
With Fountains Of Wayne, I almost always start with lyrics - maybe not the entire lyric, but I almost always need a couplet or something, and then I work from there. With Ivy, it's much more about the atmosphere and the vibe.
Adam Schlesinger
A song's lyrics can't be held culprit for the overall change in society.
Adnan Sami
Rap lyrics are really the only thing I've ever written.
Aesop Rock
My brother came home from college with a Mountain Goats cassette and I was like, 'What is this?' The lyrics were crazy to me. I'd never heard anything like it.
I love rap lyrics, I love hearing people rap, I love molding a thought or idea into the shape that fits on a rap beat.
To me, it seems more realistic to my thought process when things feel a little scattered in the lyrics. Being disjointed is not that abstract of a thing when I think about how my brain works - I feel like it's almost more realistic. That's how my brain works.
MCs are authors, and rock musicians who write lyrics are authors, to a degree.
People don't stress enough that when they're writing lyrics, they are writing.
Soul lyrics, soul music came at about the same time as the civil rights movement, and it's very possible that one influenced the other.
Ahmet Ertegun
Songs with simple lyrics really take off in Irish nightclubs.
Aisling Bea
There's no reason anybody should be reading too much into 'Thrift Shop.' I just have because I have a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old who are really into going to lyric websites, hitting print, and printing lyrics for every song that's popular.
Al Madrigal
Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.
Al Stewart
To do a musical takes a tremendous amount of energy because you have to act and sing at the same time. And everything has to be precise. Because you can't forget the lyrics because the band keeps playing, you know, and you're under a certain amount of pressure.
Alan Alda
Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it.
Alan Jackson
There's such a rich trove of unheard Howard Ashman lyrics that we're so blessed to draw from.
Whatever I gain from writing lyrics, I feel I lose a little bit for the musical aspect by having that lyrical burden on me. But when I'm liberated from worrying about the words, frankly, I feel I'm a better composer.
Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces.
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.
That's something - you laugh about Eminem... It's funny, man, because I didn't like him when he first came out, ya know. It seemed like a big joke. But I think the guy's for real, and I like his lyrics!
Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.
When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life. So I bit my tongue. I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.
I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.
I make up new lyrics to well-known lullabies. Mostly because I don't actually know a lot of the lyrics.
I know my lyrics might be weird to some, but they're not like that to me because I know where they come from - I know the secret.
Songwriters always reminded me of that kid at school who would go around with his guitar, like, 'Yeah, songwritin' man,' looking wistful. That wasn't me - those kinds of people put me off. In the early days, I'd write a bunch of lyrics and almost look at them as a sort of joke, to make the rest of the boys laugh.
You don't meet that many people that you can talk about Roots Manuva with, but that was my favorite in school, this record of his called 'Run Come Save Me.' When I first started writing lyrics, it came from that.
I'm not crazy about country-western music. But the lyrics are good.
I get mad about something, and then I have this melody in my head, and then afterwards, the lyrics come.
I like Patti Smith's lyrics, and sometimes think I could be influenced by them. But she has a kind of cool that's beyond me.
I think I enjoy Sondheim so much because of the lyrics. The lyrics, the cornucopia of options.
Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' and Carole King's 'It's Too Late' are examples of why I am a singer/songwriter. I practice these songs every day. The melodies are timeless in the rock world, the lyrics are words that I need to say, and they need to be heard again.
As a lyricist, you love to hear other great lyrics or other great concepts.
I had this thing about not giving too much of myself away, so I thought, if I sang lyrics, that's giving too much away. You know, I really didn't want to give myself away.
Lyrics are kind of the whole thing; it's the message. Something might have a beautiful melody but if it's not the truth coming out of your mouth, it's not appealing.
It's pretty clear I am a diehard Chris Cornell fan, so his voice, musicianship, and lyrics have touched me across many different projects.
When I hear from fans that they not only like the music but they're also very touched by the lyrics, or they also learned about a specific cause because of me, that's really rewarding.
The most common time I write lyrics is the middle of the night.
I really like writing poetry and lyrics because it's one thing where I give up control. I don't feel like I need to be in control of it. I just sort of let it happen, and then I know when it's done. I know when it's finished.
I like to write lyrics when I feel it, and because of that, I like to keep a log of lyrics all the time.
I like lyrics a lot.
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.
Industry executives sacrificed art for what sells and mega-stars now saturate the market with the same tired lyrics.
Lyrics is the face of any song. The combination of composition, lyrics and singing is what makes a song a song.
To a bookish boy in a Boston suburb in the mid-1970s, the lyrics of Cole Porter came as something of a revelation.
