John Michael Hayes Quotes

When you write songs, you can't really point out the exact thing you're inspired by. It's more a state or a mood or an atmosphere that you're trying to put into words.

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.

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.

It was actually working with Kendrick Lamar that pushed me further into the act of songwriting, specifically.

'Finally' actually started out as a poem. I always wrote poetry, and pretty soon I figured out that if I could write poems, I could write songs.

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.

It doesn't take me long to write songs.

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

My template for most songs is 'Is this inspiring?' and with the blues it so often is.

I've always tended to write songs prolifically.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

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

For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.

Finding fresh song topics can sometimes be quite difficult.

I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.

I'm always writing; my phone is full of ideas - melodies and lyrics and stuff.

Songwriting is the other weight on the opposite side of the scale from touring. They balance me out creatively.

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.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

Lyrics are coming to you all the time. I get inspiration in the middle of the night.

I'll never forget when me and Jason Matthews wrote the line, 'Don't be a tape player hater,' in 'Country Man,' I don't think I ever laughed harder. We didn't know where we were gonna put that in a song, but we knew we had to make it into a song. I just remember laughing and being so proud of such a goofy little line.

With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.

I don't set goals for myself too much, but I'm always trying to write that one great song.

The very best thing you can do is to try to write a song that has some sort of impact.