Lyrical Imagery Quotes

Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song. Until I heard 'Little Earthquakes' all my lyrics used really obvious analogies like rain for tears.

I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be.

On the last album, I didn't want to disturb the melody with too many stories. This time, I wanted to know if I was able to create images with words, with the sound of words.(...) I think that’s a good thing when the one who is listening, is feeling it in a different way that the one who creates. We are all listening with different perspectives.(...) I don’t want to impose my subjectivity to the listener.

A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

You can find me in the melodies, the chord progressions, the song style and structure. The lyrical places you fine me most are in the lyrics that 'show' more than 'tell.' I like to describe what the listener is seeing and let them make up the middle rather than telling them.

I don't write songs about a specific, elusive thing.

I love writing every song I can like a little mini movie. I like to have a character, or some characters, and really paint a picture with the song.

The songs that work best are broad lyrically and have one strong concept in the metaphor.

Never was a cornflake girl; Thought it was a good solution: hanging with the raisin girls.

With 'Wagon Wheel,' I loved the visual it painted, and it's a song I can truly say I look forward to performing every night.

I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.

When I make music and I'm talking on records, it's like I'm painting a picture. In my mind, I'm seeing a film.

When I wrote 'Mushaboom', I was living in the second verse, but I suddenly found myself in the first.

I was probably 16 or 17 when 'Core' came out, and I just remember how Scott could cater to the song and create these characters. That blew me away.

In my fiction, there's a lot that's borrowed from music. It's never like I'm taking a lyric, but more the mood of a particular song. 'The Boy Detective Fails' was like listening to 'Eleanor Rigby' by The Beatles, this very melancholy-but-poppy song.

You're always going to write and draw inspiration from things that you're feeling, things that you've felt. It's kind of impossible not to unless you're writing a song and there's an exact scenario that you're trying to write a song for.

Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don't look at myself as a visual artist. I make music.

It's like visual is super important to me. So if I am writing a song, like, I have to have the title.

'Reign' - and this might sound cheesy, but it's a dream I had. I dreamt everything that happened in that song, woke up, and wrote the song.

My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase.

I always write the lyrics first. There are one or two exceptions over the years, but that's pretty much the way it's been. The process of applying music to words is a bit like scoring a film. You've got imagery.

When I pick up the guitar, it's a melody, and that's what drives the lyrics. It's bits and pieces of truth, but it is storytelling.

Songs like 'Everything To Help You Sleep' or 'Claws in Your Back' took a little bit more grappling with the actual poetry for me to feel comfortable with the song. And there's a little bit more song crafting going on, and I had a specific idea in mind of the imagery I wanted to evoke.

I'm not a sports person, but every now and then, I incorporate sports in my rhymes because I'm always grabbing from certain things and getting inspired by something whether I'm totally involved in it or not.

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna stick with country until I ride off in the sunset.