Songwriting Challenges Quotes

Love songs are the most complex to write because everyone knows about it.

After struggling for so long in the industry and writing so many failed songs and hearing 'no' for so long - I'm so grateful every time I hear a song that I was a part of on the radio.

It's hard for me to always explain my songs, and people always expect a meaning and to know what it's about. Sometimes when I write these songs I'm feeling a particular emotion, so to then come back and explain what I was feeling or put it into words is quite difficult.

It's hard to write a song about reality because reality doesn't rhyme.

With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.

And the thing about me is, I have a lot of mellow songs, because they're the easiest for me to write. I wanted to try to make some more upbeat songs, so, I ended up gravitating toward writing songs with friends, which was a great learning process, and also we came up with great songs. Those are the songs that came out the most naturally.

That's one of the problems in being a songwriter and living a long time. What you eventually end up doing is you start imitating yourself.

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

When I start writing songs, and they come easily, I'm always very suspicious. That usually means they're reminding me of something I've already done before. When the songs become unsettling, and I feel anxious about what I'm doing, that usually means it's going to be more interesting later on when we actually record the stuff.

When I've produced a song, I try to record a vocal over it, and sometimes it becomes really hard. Sometimes I've already said a lot that I want to say within the production. The vocal is just adding to it, rather than it being a song.

It's hard to be in the limelight and write songs that cater to fans that have expectations of you. We just want to write songs that we love, but all the different people with different ideas coming in make it difficult. We have to ask ourselves if we're writing for the most important people: the fans.

I'm not good at happy, lightweight kind of music. I'm not really good at pop music. 'Cars' is probably the only true pop song I ever wrote. I wish I could write more, but I'm not very good at it.

'Appetite for Destruction' was the only thing written with lyrics and melody fitting the guitar parts at the same time. After that, I got a barrage of guitar songs that I was supposed to put words to, and I don't know if that was the best thing for Guns.

The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.

It's hard to be serious about so many things. [Look at the whole emphasis] on the charts, if you're a songwriter.

It's such a hard thing to write a song for your fans without sounding naff and thanking them for spending money on you.

I think any great song is difficult to write, in some aspect. It's just difficult to make somebody feel something. That is the main goal. How do you make somebody want to get up and dance? How do you make somebody feel okay after their breakup?

Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong.

If you asked me to write a rock song or a rap song, I couldn't do it because they're not in my fingers.

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.

Every song falls short of the glory of what a song could be. That's why the urge is there to start again and yet again. Often it's the fault of rhyme. I've discovered a hundred times that there just aren't enough rhymes to say what I wanted to say, so I said something else instead. Sometimes it was a better thing, but the thing I meant to say went unsaid. So there's an opening for another song.

Songwriters, we're always looking for new concepts, fresh concepts, and there are only so many ways you can talk about partying, really.

I work hard at that, but the fact that there are a lot of good songs means there are also a lot of really bad songs I've written that you never hear.

To create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish.

Collaborating on lyrics has never worked for me.