I think songwriters are more related to fiction writers. The Odyssey was a story in song. To me, that's so beautiful, all those painted characters, all those travels and adventures.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.
I've always loved both writing and songwriting. The journey is fascinating to me.
'The Odyssey' is the great tale, and I was really taken by 'The Iliad,' so I dig into those things, and when I was a kid I didn't. You've gotta have a certain level of understanding yourself before that stuff really starts to resonate.
Not being a natural songwriter... for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein.
You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul.
A lot of the great songwriters in history have been collaborators, with a separate lyricist.
I find so many songwriters today are missing an element... either the production is amazing but the songs aren't, or it's the other way around.
I'm a writer, first and foremost, and I sort of take my cues from the songwriters of the '70s, who are talking about what's really important to them.
When you research prolific songwriters, it is usually later in their career they write songs that they distance themselves from, or it's about other people.
I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively - and there were a lot of choices - writing songs was king.