Garth Brooks Quotes

I've been ripping the Rolling Stones off with every song I write in some form or another.

I try to steal something from the great singers. Of course, I don't want to imitate their sound, but I try to do a sort of compromise.

I write heavily under the influence of James Taylor.

I wear my musical heart on my sleeve and show all my influences off. I'm happy for someone to point out that my song sounds like someone else's.

I wrote 'Love Foolish,' and when I heard the music for the first time, it felt like this was a song that Twice hadn't done before. I thought the song and music had a very mature tone, so I wrote the lyrics to match. I was inspired by the music directly.

I have to have a guitar sitting around. I sing in the shower. I sing around the house. The music comes secondary. The lyrics come first.

'Gorilla Man' is a composite of a few individuals, but the song itself was actually inspired by James Taylor. I spied his 'Gorilla' album laying on my floor and in some altered state, instantly started singing the chorus. It was fun to write. There's an old notebook with at least three more verses in it somewhere.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

Honest, I listen to classical mostly. It keeps my mind fresh to write rock songs.

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.

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.

Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music.

Somebody said I sound like an old lady, and I was really insulted by that. I'm trying to sound like Skip James and Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye.

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.

Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song.

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

I thought if Oasis could get away with sounding like The Beatles, I could get away with sounding like Abba.

Great classic music that I've been turned on to has not only inspired and influenced me, but it has had an effect on my songwriting.

Everything that I do on stage comes from seeing the Black Crowes in '95 in Charlotte. For 'Let Her Cry,' I was just trying to write 'She Talks to Angels.'

I learned so much watching my dad write songs and perform in front of thousands of people, and people were singing along to songs that I watched him write; it stuck with me.

'Black Hole Sun' was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.

I used to write on pads with a pen but had trouble reading the words the next day. Years later, Bob Dylan taught me to just write and write on a laptop computer. Then I'd print that out. When it was time to write a song, I'd go through the pages and sing melodies to words that moved me.

We just try to write about things that are close to our hearts. We don't sit around trying to write another 'Free Bird' or 'Sweet Home Alabama.'

There's a wonderful woodland, spiritual song I wrote in Undercliff in Lyme Regis, and I used to walk up there with my dog and always come back with an idea.

The song 'Leroy and Lanisha' on my album 'The Epic' is really my homage to 'Linus and Lucy.'