Tommy Lee Quotes

Sometimes the song title comes with the songs, other times you just sorta make something up afterwards.

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

I've been a list maker for years, even before I was a musician. I was always writing things down and kept long lists of things that would make good album titles and things like that. I'm constantly thinking in terms of songwriting.

When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.

I do always the music before the lyrics. The story or an idea for the lyrics appears during the composing process normally, but some other times I already have a strong idea of the story I would like to sing before any music comes to my mind.

I'm always interested in writing. I keep music in journals on an everyday basis. I'm always looking for ideas that can be music.

I was constantly in the studio at my home writing ideas that would later become 'Hotel California' or 'Victim of Love.'

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.

I heard some stuff recently from Julian Casablancas, and his solo stuff is amazing. If I could write with anyone, it would be him.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

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.

I'm always writing songs, and I've got a bunch that I want to record.

I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.

Finding fresh song topics can sometimes be quite difficult.

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

When I write songs, I like to write lyrics first, and I think that's different from a lot of singer-songwriters. But I heard Sammy Cahn was asked what comes first, the lyrics or the music, and he said, 'The paycheck.'

As a songwriter, you might write every day and throughout the course of a year you might get four songs that are really special.

Songwriting is something that's very daunting until you have your first successful song, I think.

I'll hear a beat and think, 'How can I make this a banger?' I'll write the lyrics on my phone or on a piece of paper, and either way, it's going to be a slapper.

'White Rabbit' was mostly done in about two days, the music in about half an hour. The music is a 'Bolero' rip-off and the lyrics a rearrangement of 'Alice in Wonderland.' You take two spectacular hits and throw them together, and it's hard to miss.

When I feel like every day when I get up I'm writing songs, that's the time to make a record.

Usually when I write a song, I'll write the music and then kind of fit some words to it.

Honestly, most of the stuff I made for 'TV on the Radio,' I write in the studio.

All my records have been written to be records, rather than writing a group of songs and seeing if they fit together.