Beth Ditto Quotes

As a musician, you write and make music as you go. It's definitely in a great sequence. When you release songs, you think, "Let me make sure this goes with this so it's like a story."

I've never liked songs that are about writing, or struggling to write. Maybe it's because it's too relatable to me.

It's a really big struggle for me to write a song. Songs take either 30 seconds for me to write or a year or two to piece together, depending on the song and how I'm feeling on any given day. I don't really like to write music at all unless I am completely unbothered by touring.

When I have just sat down and tried to write the lyrics of a song, usually about half of it sounds like bullshit. I just have to go away from something and come back to it again later. I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.

I think that anyone really can write songs, it just takes having an idea and a feeling and chasing it, and you can learn more about it. I think that's why I go to so many sessions. It is a craft that you can learn from other people. I find it to be the most fascinating thing. So I write a lot, yeah!

I could write all songs all day long about what I think about the music industry or music in general. Sometimes I gotta be like, "Let's write about something else." You don't want to say the same thing over and over again. In a lot of ways, I look at records as a year or two of my life encapsulated in songs. They're almost like journal entries.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

A lot of big whoever producers, they come with a song and they say, 'Sing this,' and I'm not that girl.

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.

You can be more creative when you're not feeling like a slave. When you're on a record label, they have you like that.

I had a lot of time to myself, and I would listen to a lot of music, mostly music that I knew fairly well and had a relationship with. And I'd think, well, what is it that I've never been able to do that this person or people are able to do with this song? Why haven't I been able to do it, and what can they do that I wish I could do? And then I'd try to do that. I'd start each day getting into the songs, and I'd think about how I might get closer to this music that I love, but haven't been able to make before.

When you first sit down to write the first song, until you've maybe got three or four under your belt, it's always, to me, like a mountain to climb. You look at that one blank piece of paper and you think, 'God, how many songs do I have to write here?' It always feels like pressure.

Since I write the lyrics, I don't want to be pigeonholed into a person who's out there preaching these songs. If you read the lyrics, there isn't a story being set up for you. You have to use your imagination to get the best out of the songs - if you choose to do that.

I'm never sure if I'll ever write another song, what the song will be about and if what initially sparked the beginning of a song might complete it.

If you wanna write a song, ask a guitar

When I write a song it's always from the point of view: makes the song the best it can be.

I think that any songwriter - and I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us - you don't write the songs anyhow.

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

I just start singing some words with a tune. I don't ever write a song thinking, Now I'll write a song about... .

Sometimes song happens all at once where you sit down and the lyrics and the music just come out. So there definitely isn't one way that it happens - there are a lot of different things that take place.

I think there’s no greater joy than completing a song out of thin air. It’s like inventing something, but it’s invisible, you know? It’s weird. It amazes me. You can send it out in the world, and that’s the joy. It’s like giving birth to all these songs and letting them go like they’re your kids.

Being a rock musician is already like ego-tripping hardcore. You're self-consumed, and you're always thinking. It's really easy to say, "I'm going to write a song about this situation, and when I'm done, everyone will care." To everybody else, that's ego-tripping.

I suppose ever since I was about 14, I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," and I remember thinking, "how do you possibly write songs like that?" I remember starting to try and write songs around that age, but just sitting around with an acoustic guitar, and try to come up with ideas for songs, and that's just what I've done ever since. I just never really stopped doing that, I suppose.

I think that, when you're writing your songs, there's always a debate about whether, is that you in the song? Is it not you in the song?

I find it extremely difficult talking about my songs because there's so many different things that can make a song come together.