John Darnielle Quotes

I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs.

I wouldn't sit down and work at writing a song like a novelist or something.

I just write songs whenever I feel like it, whenever they come to me.

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

When I go into a room to write, it's like I'm not trying to say, 'I need to write a song that sounds like Eric Church or Jason Aldean.' I just try to get the best song that's in the room that day. Whatever style or sound that may be, I'm not afraid to attack it at that angle.

At times, I will get in the studio and force myself to just write an entire front-to-back record, and 'Let Me Go' is one of these.

There hasn't been one moment in my career where I felt I didn't have any control over the creative aspects of my records.

Most songs I write are spur-of-the-moment-type things. I have to be spontaneous. If not, songwriting can bore me. There is no pre-design or idea of what I am going to do when I go into the studio. It's all like that for me. I could go in and write two or three songs in an eight-hour session. You can't over-think songs. You just can't.

I don't sit down and say I'm going to write a song about this or that. They are never mapped out.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

I want to try and be instinctive as a writer and director.

There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.

It's hard to know exactly what it sounds like to me. I'm in the studio and I write it. and that's it.

I'm not used to not having enough time to live with the songs. Usually, if I write something, I live with it for a little while.

The first record we put out on Fueled by Ramon, 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea what the term 'producer' meant. It was just us writing songs, and we are trying to go back to that - singing in a room and vibing off each other.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

There's no rule that says you have to make records constantly, like clockwork, to continue being who you are.

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

The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.

I've always been a fan of just writing songs and making music.

I'm a pop princess at heart. Pop is about distilling what you want to say and making it easy. And the way I write isn't about making things easy. It's a weird juxtaposition.

If I write for myself, I write a song and I bring in the musicians that are best suited to play it. There's a freedom there.

I've written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that's what's been fun about looking back.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

I just write a song, and it just comes out however it wants to. And some of them are catchy songs like 'Here Comes The Sun,' and some of them aren't, you know.