The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.

Music's staying power is a function of how timeless the lyrics song and production are.

I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?

Chelsea Morning is a great Joni Mitchell song and I guess I'm partial to her lyrics because they show me a slightly different perspective on life.

Every time I get up in the morning melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

I grew up listening to Jay-Z and I think the first time I really became obsessed with learning and thinking about lyrics was when I started listening to rap I was 11 12 and started becoming aware of music beyond the familiar.

There can be no proof that Blake's lyric is composed of the best words in the best order only a conviction accepted by our knowledge and judgment that it is so.

I not only wanted to showcase lyrical skills but also continue to drop knowledge on the hiphop community. I'm looking to elevate through my music and through my music I educate.

In those days it didn't take much imagination to come up with something that required great lyric development skills. You just thought of an experience that you might have gone through and write it down.

Lyrically I like to use themes that make the listener use his or her imagination and to give a little of the lessons I've learned in my own life.

Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.

I don't really get shaken very much. People could heckle me a spotlight could go out I could forget a lyric... I'm not operating on somebody's brain you know what I mean? So I just think it's all funny.

I like reading Ball Tongue lyrics and all that stuff. And they published a book and I wouldn't give my lyrics and it's all wrong in the book and I giggle. It's funny.

The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem with interrelated sections.

I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me he's up there with Bryan Ferry.

Of the individual poems some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.

I guess lyrically they're similar because they're talking about escaping the kind of misery that likes company. 'The Last One Alive ' for me is very simple. It's just about alienation really that causes anger.

When I was younger I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life. So I bit my tongue. I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.

Music should probably provide answers in terms of lyrical content and giving people a sense of togetherness and oneness as opposed to being alone in their thoughts and dilemmas or regrets or happiness or whatever.

I try to write lyrics so that they won't age which sort of leaves you with the big subjects like death and love and sex and violence.