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Traditionally, songwriters can't sing. And that holds true in my case, also.

As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It's easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.

But when you get to a song, not only do you have to do a vocal melody, you have to write words and not be redundant and make some semblance of a story.

When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.

All we do as songwriters is rewrite the songs that have impressed us till we find our own voice. It's part of learning the craft.

I try to write life and not songs. People live life, and when you write life, you're going to mess around and touch somebody's heart, and they'll relate to you and what you're singing about.

Write your own songs. It helps you to mean what you're singing, which will then make it mean something to listeners.

To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to write a novel is not the same thing as writing a play. There is a difference in form, but essentially what you're after is the same thing.

There's a lot of personal stuff that can go into songwriting but there's also a lot of dramatization and fictionalization. You have to do that to make a good song.

There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.