Nicky Jam Quotes

I'd listen to all the stuff that was going on around me and drift off into my fantasies about it. My fantasies have fuelled all the songs I've ever written.

Sometimes I'll come up with a lick that I really love, and I'll try to put the right words to it for years. Suddenly something comes to me that works just right.

I'm just writing less of my own music lately - I go in and out of phases a lot. Sometimes there are these accidents that just sort of happen, that are kind of waiting around the corner. I guess Modest Mouse was one of them.

Whenever I write a new song, it always happens when I come back from Europe or Egypt or something like that. It's always from travelling.

Sometimes when you're writing a song and that song comes into your head, it definitely comes from somewhere, like a real experience.

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

It's no longer necessary to slave over the vocals. I don't sing the lyrics until I write them, and singing is the very last thing I do. I record the entire track, and then I worry about lyrics and vocals. The music will suggest where the words are going to a certain extent.

Every song I've written is luck, I think; it's luck - 'How did that just happen?'

Once I'd heard 'Modern Times' by Bob Dylan, it really changed the way I wanted to make records.

Every day you can write a song but some days there is just some magic in the air and something special about the catch; other days you write all day on a song line or idea.

I never set out to write a certain kind of song, I just play my guitar and see if I catch something.

Music has to keep moving. But I was lucky. For me there was always something around the corner.

I don't write a great song every day. I don't write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.

Music is a big part of my life. I listen to different genres, and I choose the music that will inspire the next part of my story.

You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.

But I did that, and I created another blues scene, another something I can sing about.

If you write songs long enough, you run out of material that's original to yourself.

There was never an 'a-ha' moment when a spider bit me and I knew I could write songs. For that reason, I don't know if I'm always going to be able to. I want to write songs forever, but it's an elusive thing.

It's incredible how much beauty exists in the world of music and how many artists you can really inspire with your own work.

When I first started making music, I wrote the lyrics first, but now, because the music has got kind of wilder, I've flipped it.

I sleep music. I wake up, and there's a riff in my head. Every step I take, there's a riff, a beat, or something.

You never know what little idea or joke, what flame flickering really quickly, will become a song. That first idea, it can come any time. If it's in Spanish, you go on in Spanish. If it's in French, French. If it's in English, English. Or Portuguese. I'll try to do my best. I like Italian, though I don't speak it much.