Success Quote by Shawn Colvin

"I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music"

Shawn Colvin, Artist

About this Quote

There is a quiet defiance in Colvin admitting what the modern music industry treats as borderline heresy: she doesn’t thrive in the “room” where songs are supposed to be engineered on demand. The phrase “successful outcome” sounds almost corporate, which is the point. Co-writing today is often sold as a productivity hack - assemble talented people, chase a hook, leave with a track. Colvin uses that language to puncture the myth. If the assembly line worked for her, she’d say so. It hasn’t.

The subtext is about protecting a particular kind of inner weather. “Sitting in a room with someone” isn’t just logistics; it’s scrutiny. It’s the subtle pressure to perform spontaneity, to narrate your instincts in real time, to compromise before you’ve even met your own idea. Colvin’s songwriting persona has always leaned intimate and exacting, and this is an artist stating her process without apology: the emotional core of her work isn’t negotiable in a committee setting.

Then she offers a workaround that doubles as a boundary: she “generally co-writes” by letting someone else bring “the music or part of the music.” Translation: she collaborates, but on her terms. Music can be a scaffold; melody and chords create a mood she can inhabit privately, where lyrics arrive as lived experience rather than group consensus. In a culture that romanticizes collaboration as moral virtue, Colvin reminds us that chemistry can’t be scheduled, and authorship isn’t just credit - it’s conditions.

Quote Details

Topic	Music
Source	Help us find the source
Cite

More Quotes by Shawn Add to List

About the Author

Shawn Colvin (born January 10, 1958) is a Artist from USA.

5 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

"Being a songwriter does not rely on an audience or other band members or a camera. I can just sit in a room and write songs"

Rick Springfield, Musician

"I write songs as a way of understanding myself, and then I put them out so other people can understand themselves too"

Mitski, Musician

"I always write with music. It takes me a while to figure out the right piece of music for what I'm working on. Once I figure it out, that's the only thing I'll play"

Kate DiCamillo, Author

"Like, I kind of developed my musical style in a vacuum. Even though I listen to a lot of stuff, the way I wrote was in my bedroom, really privately. It's still the way I write, actually"

Liz Phair, Musician

"We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians"

Chad Smith, Musician

"When you're a songwriter and you click with someone, you tend to want to keep writing with that person"

Billy Sherwood, Musician

"I write music just for me. I'm certainly not good enough to do it on any kind of a level but I enjoy that time because it's quiet"

Alex O'Loughlin, Actor

"I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane"

Kelly Jones, Musician

"Anyone who writes knows that ultimately the majority of your time is spent alone in a room with a piano or a guitar, no matter what the project is"

Trey Anastasio, Musician

"It helps to be able to be alone. 'Cuz writing is done alone, unless you collaborate, but I don't do that. Ask my ex-wife"

Dirk Benedict, Actor

"It's very hard to write a song alone. It's only by jamming that you can get a song together"

Maurice Gibb, Musician

"I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer"

Alicia Witt, Actress

"The more alone I am, the more focused I can get. I've written things with people, some of which I liked and others I think are total travesties. Collaborating is trying to make a piece of music and get someone else to come up with the ideas. What's the fun of that?"

Alex Chilton, Musician

"When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together"

Tom Glazer, Musician

Tom Glazer

"You have to write badly to write at all. If it's crappy, I will rewrite it later. But it will be mine. You can hear the resonance of an artist who goes into herself"

Kathy Mattea, Musician

"I write music all the time. When I talk about having writer's block, it's more to do with lyrics than anything else"

Sarah McLachlan, Musician

Sarah McLachlan

"I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write"

Amy Winehouse, Musician

Amy Winehouse

"There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it"

Nuno Bettencourt, Musician

"I'll have to get people to write songs for me right now until my own writing comes around"

Andy Gibb, Musician

"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"

Barry Gibb, Musician