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ISA's 'Classic Stage Musical'
Each month, we recommend eight London or Broadway Musicals which in our opinion offer outstanding songwriting content. To book tickets, go to londontheatre.co.uk or broadwayleague.com/
Bruce Springsteen
I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along...I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't...The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with
Billy Joel
I love telling stories, and I love hearing a good story being told. Songwriting is fascinating in that it incorporates two things that I love to do: create a story and write the music to it. Then I get to sing it and play the piano on top of that. My job allows me to do four things that I absolutely love. It doesn't get much better than that
Paul McCartney
The great thing about John and I in the old days was that we didn't have tapes - but that was great because it focused us. We used to say to each other, 'if we can't remember it tomorrow, it's no good.'
How memorable is a song that you wrote last night and you can't remember this morning? It's not good.
I'm still looking to write a great song.... You always are. You know, you never think, "Well, that's enough ... that's good enough".
Joni Mitchell
You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good
song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that
moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining
Brian Wilson
It started out — my mom and dad took a little vacation to Mexico and they left $250 for food. But instead of food we went and bought some instruments. We got a bass, guitar and a set of drums. ... I was 19. Dennis was 15. Carl was 17. Mike was 18. Al was 19. And so we wrote a song called "Surfin'" in my living room. We were all playing and singing and Mike and I wrote a song called "Surfin'" and that's how it all started....The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio…well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else…My state of being has been elevated, because I’ve been exercising, writing songs…No masterpiece ever came overnight. A person’s masterpiece is something that you nurture along.”
John Lennon
"Do You Want To Know A Secret". The idea came from this thing my mother used to sing to me when I was one or two years old, when she was still living with me. It was from a Disney movie: "Do you want to know a secret? Promise not to tell/You are standing by a wishing well." So, with that in my head, I wrote the song and just gave it to George to sing. I thought it would be a good vehicle for him, because it had only three notes and he wasn't the best singer in the world.
"I Wanna Be Your Man " was a kind of lick Paul had - 'I wanna be your lover, baby. I wanna be your man.' I think we finished it off for the Stones. They wanted a song and we went to see what kind of stuff they did. Mick and Keith heard we had an unfinished song. We sort of played it roughly to them and they said, 'Yeah, OK, that's our style.' But it was only really a lick, so Paul and I went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all still sitting there talking. We came back, and that's how Mick and Keith got inspired to write... because, 'Jesus, look at that. They just went in the corner and wrote it and came back!' You know, right in front of their eyes we did it. So we gave it to them. It was a throw-away. The only two versions of the song were Ringo and the Rolling Stones. It shows how much importance we put on them. We weren't going to give them anything great, right? I believe it was the Stones' first record.
"Norwegian Wood" is my song completely. It was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside of the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going on, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair... but in such a smoke-screen way that you couldn't tell. But I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with.
Allan Rich
I got a job as a waiter at The Source in Los Angeles, a famous restaurant, unbeknownst to me at the time, where a scene from "Annie Hall" was shot. It was a block away from my house. It was also a major hangout for music people and I met all these famous songwriters and recording artists there. I was their waiter. I was so frustrated because I'd see everybody's name on the credit cards and I couldn't believe who they were, and I didn't want to wait on them, I wanted a songwriting career like them. I used to tell the songwriters and artists at the restaurant that I was a songwriter but it was hard for anybody to take me seriously when I was wearing a black apron and taking their orders. I'd go in the kitchen and start to cry and say "How am I ever going to get out of this restaurant and make it as a songwriter?" And the manager of the restaurant once said "Oh, you're going to be here for a lifetime." But I ate, slept and breathed music and was very driven and determined and my manager didn't believe me when I gave my notice. He thought I was kidding. I still kept my job after I wrote songs for Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight. But that same year after I co-wrote my three Barry Manilow songs, I said "Hasta la vista, baby!" and never looked back.
Gordon Lightfoot
'If You Could Read My Mind' was written during the collapse of my marriage.My daughter got me to correct 'The feelings that you lacked' to 'The feelings that we lacked'.
ISA's 'Songwriter Hall Of Fame'
The International Songwriters Association's "Hall Of Fame" has been chosen by the members of the ISA since 1981, and by visitors to this site since 1998. You too can vote for your favourite songwriter of all time by going to the "Hall Of Fame" link at the top of any page
Avril Lavigne
I wrote “Girlfriend” when I was drunk. The chorus was written in two minutes. It took nothing. And what's
really cool about “I Can Do Better” is we wrote it, and then I just ran into the booth, and I sang. I laid
down the verse, and ... we just used my demo [take]. It was totally different - so much fun!
Amy Winehouse Songwriting is an exorcism. I get all my stuff out there. If I didn’t have this medium to get my experiences across, I would be lost
Billy Joel
I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. What I do, in my opinion, is by no means extraordinary
Bob Dylan
My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it...In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody
Guthrie.
John Lennon
"A Day In The Life ". Just as it sounds: I was reading the paper one day and I noticed two stories. One
was the drinks heir who killed himself in a car - one of the Guinness family. Tara Brown. That was the
main headline story. He died in London in a car crash. On the next page was a story about 4000 holes in
Blackburn, Lancashire. In the streets, that is. They were going to fill them all. Paul's contribution was the
beautiful little lick in the song "I'd love to turn you on". I had the bulk of the song and the words, but he
contributed this little lick floating around in his head that he couldn't use for anything. I thought it was a damn good piece of work.
James Taylor
I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned
out I could. To be a musician, especially a singer/songwriter - well, you don't do
that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of
alienation in your life. I wish I could say, 'Oh, that would be great to write a song
about.' But what I'm doing is assembling and minimally directing what is sort of
unconsciously coming out. It's not something I can direct or control. I just end up
being the first person to hear these songs.
Barry Mason
They asked us to do the score for a film titled "Les Bicyclettes De Belsize" - a beautiful, arty film, no dialogue, about a boy on a bike, who falls in love with this girl on a poster. So Les and I do four or five songs, and the day comes to present them to the moguls, and they say, "Great. Wonderful songs, boys - but where's the title song?" So I said, "With all due respect, you just can't write a song called 'Les Bicyclettes De Belsize'. It's not possible". And they said, "We must have a title song. We're in the studio tomorrow. Please!" So Les and I walk back up Charing Cross Road, quite depressed, go into Francis, Day & Hunter, find an office with a piano, get two strong cups of tea - our drugs! - and that afternoon, we wrote it. And ironically, it was the only song in the movie that meant anything. The others were lovely songs but none of them sold, while "Bicyclettes" is now a standard. So that was a lucky break. We were forced to write it.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
I've always enjoyed writing, that was how I managed to lie my way into Oxford University with some of the worst exam results on record; I just wrote a very good essay, won a place at Magdalen College, and left after a term because there was nothing theatrical going on there and I was bored out of my mind. I went part-time to the Royal College of Music, but even my father told
me it was a waste of time and that they'd educate my music out of me, so I didn't stay there long either. I don't wish to be told how to write a fugue in four parts in the style of Palestrina. Somehow, I don't see that forming queues at a Broadway box office.
Stephen Sondheim
Clever rhyming is easy, anybody can do it…Oscar Hammerstein II taught me that a song should be like a little one-act play, with an exposition, a development and a conclusion; at the end of the song the character should have moved to a different position…Cole Porter wrote a valid but entirely different kind of song, in which you take a particular idea and play with it and develop it in terms of cleverness, wit, intellectual or romantic intensity…The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890.
International Songwriters Association Hits Fifty!
International Songwriters Association will be celebrating its fiftieth birthday this year.
Since 1967, the ISA has been advising songwriters in more than 60 countries worldwide
while Songwriter Magazine has the finest archive of songwriter interviews ever assembled
Obituary • Jesse Boyce
Jesse Boyce (69), songwriter and bass guitarist whose hits include 'Firefly' (The
Temptations), and who backed Little Richard for more than 30 years, as well as such
stars as Candi Staton, Bobby Gentry and Wilson Pickett.
In Nashville, Tennessee, USA, of cancer
Click on the picture above to read the full obituary
The Premier Songwriting Contest - The Eurovision From Lys Assia (Switzerland 1956), to Salvador Sobral who won for Portugal in 2017, we examine the winners (and the losers) in what has become the most famous (or infamous) song contest in the world - Le Grand-Prix Eurovision de la Chanson Européenne. OK, The Eurovision!
Want To Become A Master Of Songwriting? On this site, we have a special twelve-part series of articles, which will take you less than an hour to complete, but which will turn you into a Master Of Songwriting. Or something very like that anyway! Just click the pic to begin the series today.
Do You Need Some Free Advice?
They say that nothing is free - but this is! if you are a songwriter with a problem, you do not have to be a member to ask us a question about songwriting. Just click the pic above and tell us what your songwriting or music industry problem is. We will reply. Honest!
Songs Required This Week Almost every day, we are contacted by singers, bands, managers, record labels and music publishers, seeking new unpublished songs for recording purposes. Just click any of the pictures above and have a quick look at this week's song requirements and opportunities.
Looking For A Hit Songwriter? Singers, bands, and managers seeking hit songs, contact us daily. If you are looking for top-quality unpublished songs, then an International Songwriters Association songwriter will be more than happy to oblige. And at no cost to you. Just click the picture above!
John Lennon Song Contest The John Lennon Songwriting Contest is open to songwriters and lyric writers, and is one of the most successful songwriting contests of all, attracting songwriters and songwriting teams from all over he world. For more information, just click any one of the pictures above.
Norman Petty Interview Norman Petty remains one of rock music's most outstanding figures, as a songwriter ("Wheels"), record producer ("That'll Be The Day"), performer ("Almost Paradise"), manager (Buddy Holly) and recording engineer ("Sugar Shack"). He rarely gave interviews, but he was only too happy to speak to Jim Liddane for the International Songwriters Association.
Marijohn Wilkin Interview When Marijohn Wilkin received her first copy of International Songwriters Association's "Songwriter Magazine" in 1981, one might have been forgiven for thinking that she was at the peak of her career. After all, she had a song recorded by the Beatles! Not so - as she was to prove in the years after that. Marijohn Wilkin, doyenne of female songwriters, tells us her story.
Allan Rich Interview Exclusive interview with the man who has a slew of Gold and Platinum record awards
from classic songs which have sold a staggering 65 million records. And today, he continues to churn out tunes recorded by popular artists, including the Cast Of Glee!
Terry Noon Interview "The only thing I had was an E-type Jaguar, my pride and joy. I absolutely doted on that car, and I sold it, to start Noon Music. It was the hardest thing but it was the only way I could raise money". Legendary UK publisher and all-round nice guy, Terry Noon talks.
Gene Pitney Interview "Today's Teardrops by Roy Orbison was a big hit, but not my biggest
songwriting hit. That was Hello Mary Lou which I gave to Rick Nelson, and I've spent a lifetime analysing why it was as big as it was". The legend Gene Pitney, who wrote songs for The Crystals and Bobby Vee, talked to Jim Liddane of the ISA about his separate songwriting career.
Hal Shaper Interview "In the early days, I had no instinct towards fame or fortune, I just liked being a songwriter. I always used to wake up thinking, 'I can't imagine why everyone in the world doesn't write songs for a living!" Hal Shaper tells how an ambition to be a songwriter led to a career in publishing.
Barry Mason Interview "I wrote a song called Girl Of Mine for Elvis and there were two versions made of that. One with just the rhythm section, for the fans, without The Jordanaires or violins - and that's the version I've got". One of the greatest of British songwriters of all time, legend Barry Mason, tells all.
Lionel Bart Interview "I wrote songs for Cliff for the film. The Living Doll song itself - one morning, I was looking at the Sunday Mirror, I think, and I saw this ad for a doll that did everything. And I thought, "That'll do". Lionel Bart modestly makes the writing of an all-time classic sound so very easy!
Sonny Curtis Interview "Leo Sayer, a songwriter himself, was in his hotel room, watching television, and on came More Than I Can Say in this K-Tel commercial and he said - 'Wow, I always wanted to do that song'. And he did!" Sonny Curtis, writer of countless classic songs for stars such as Hank Williams Jr and Andy Willams, tells all to Jim Liddane of the International Songwriters Association.
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