SONG WRITERS

Have you ever wondered how your favourite songwriters create their songs? Here are some famous ones telling their secrets.

Leonard Cohen

“I’m writing all the time. And as the songs begin to form, I’m not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I’m not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.”

PJ Harvey

“If you want to be good at anything, you have to work hard at it. It doesn’t just fall from the sky. I work every day at trying to improve my writing, and I really enjoy it. Nothing fascinates me more than putting words together, and seeing how a collection of words can produce quite a deep effect.”

Fiona Apple

“I really, really enjoy fitting words together — but I only enjoy it when it’s easy, when it sort of rolls along by itself. I never erase anything and I hardly ever write anything down… I won’t write a song unless I feel I have to write the song to make myself feel better. If you’re not overflowing with something, there’s nothing to give.”

Nick Cave

“Inspiration is a word used by people who aren’t really doing anything. I go into my office every day and work. Whether I feel like it or not is irrelevant.’”

Regina Spektor

“I don’t know if it’s like this for other people, but for me, I hear all kinds of things when I write songs... When I write, everything is very abstract. They’re probably sounds that don’t exist in the world. Even taking it out of my head and putting it into piano and voice makes it more in the real world. I never start out with any songs saying, ‘This is how it’s going to sound.’ That’s the whole fun of it for me, because I can’t chase the abstract, because I don’t even remember it when I put it into the real world.”

Bob Dylan

“Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years.”

David Bowie

“You write down a paragraph or two describing several different subjects creating a kind of story ingredientslist, I suppose, and then cut the sentences into four or five-word sections; mix them up and reconnect them. You can get some pretty interesting idea combinations like this.”