Nick Lowe on songwriting

I’ve always loved Nick Lowe’s music ever since his 1978 album Pure Pop For Now People. The way he can exude playfulness in one moment and be utterly touching in another is a gift. There is also a kind of warm dignity I get from his releases of the last 25 years that I cherish.

I stumbled across this quote of his about writing songs I thought I’d share. I like the way he approaches this process. Personally, I don’t tackle every song in this manner, but I certainly resonate with his reasoning.

“When I write my own song, I work at it until I start to think that it’s a cover song. Maybe it’s a delusion, but I think that I’ve removed all of my tricks out of it. When it sounds like somebody else’s song, with me doing it, that’s the place I try to reach. The opposite is true when I come across a cover I like. I work at it until I believe that I wrote it, and I can take liberties with it in the same ways I can with ones I did actually write. It’s a sort of a reverse process, but the same thing is going on.”