Amanda Shires Quotes

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Amanda Shires

Profession : Musician

Birth : March 5, 1982

Sometimes you write songs that don't all fit together. What do you, just throw them away? This might be a chance for growth and learning. It could be a horrible fall-on-your-face kind of experiment.

Amanda Shires

When I'm outside gardening, it can be so inspiring. I think of words and melodies. It's peaceful. Every singer-songwriter should find something outside of music that makes them as happy as gardening makes me.

Amanda Shires

Of course, life experience changes and adds to writing. And observations change too, where you put yourself in relation to other people.

Amanda Shires

My undergraduate degree is in geography and sociology, so I had like no real training with words.

Amanda Shires

I can't sing like Aretha Franklin as much as I wish I could. And I don't sing like Etta James and the Judds as much as I wish I could.

Amanda Shires

'Eve's Daughter' - that's like, 'Make way, women are cool.' I feel like it's my responsibility to try and do at least a little bit for my own daughter.

Amanda Shires

Maybe, whatever influence we have, other songwriters or women or whatever can feel like they can have a place too, I guess. Or that they don't have to do things the way that we've been taught we have to do them.

Amanda Shires

Sometimes something opens up in your brain as I'm writing, thinking about the song, and it's like a whirlwind. It all comes together and I could hear what I wanted the songs to sound like, I just didn't know how to express it.

Amanda Shires

You know when you have a child and then as you get older, your parents start becoming more like your friends and then telling you things they wouldn't have told you when you were 14 or 15, answering questions about the past or whatever.

Amanda Shires

It helped my lyric writing so much studying poetry. I thought I knew what poetry was before I immersed myself in it. Poetry is meditative. It's reflective.

Amanda Shires

I write really slowly, and my lines are really, really terrible all the time. It takes so long for me to get them to be where I won't be embarrassed to sing them, and then feel like they're great.

Amanda Shires

There's a stability in being a side person that can be kind of dangerous if you also want to be an artist on your own.

Amanda Shires

I like the idea of having a living record as you go.

Amanda Shires

I have no choice in what direction my music goes, honestly, as all I get is what I'm given. I start writing the songs, and they start presenting themselves the way they want to be heard.

Amanda Shires

I started school because I felt like, as a songwriter, I was operating solely on instinct, and I was having a hard time deciding exactly what words I wanted to use. I felt like I wanted to be a writer, and being a curious person, school felt like a way to solve the problems I was having with my own work.

Amanda Shires

I'm a nervous sharer. I'm nervous to share things in their unfinished state just because, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing. You know what it could be, but you can't explain what it's going to be.

Amanda Shires

The cool thing about Americana is that the genre is accepting of all types of music.

Amanda Shires

Instinct is still important, but now I can easily identify problems like cliches and mixed metaphors, and I have a broader palette to work off of.

Amanda Shires

I have a job I love and a great family, so I'm pretty lucky.

Amanda Shires

My whole life had been bands that were men-centric - and that's a great thing, I know a lot about how to handle myself - but I think I was missing something.

Amanda Shires