When you're writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That's the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.
Interpretation
Writing songs for artists involves collaboration to realize their creative vision.
This quote emphasizes the importance of collaboration in artistic endeavors, particularly in songwriting. It suggests that the writer's role is to support and enhance the artist's vision, allowing for creativity to flourish without being bound by strict rules. This freedom in artistic expression is what makes songwriting exciting and unique.
In practice
Using this quote when discussing the creative process in a songwriting workshop.
I didn't know they would pay you money to sit in a room and write songs for other people. I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found that out, that that could be a job, I thought, 'That's the job for me. I gotta figure out how to do that.'
I like things that don't sound particularly processed or mechanical or made by machines. I like music that contains human elements, with all their flaws. There's air in it, and you can hear a room of a bunch of guys playing. Those are the magic parts.
I'm gonna keep making music that hopefully I think is good, and whatever comes out of that, that will be fine with me.
Literature is like any other trade; you will never sell anything unless you go to the right shop.
As a young person, and I know it’s hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn’t do normally if I was just by myself.
An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way
I've never been that much of a money guy. I'm more of a film guy, and most of the money I've made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.
There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power.
In my naïvety, I thought people who were in rock 'n' roll bands were great artists, and it was a huge shock to the system to realise that they weren't, that they didn't even aspire to be, really. Some of them did, maybe, but some of them, like Samson, were very frightened of the idea.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.