“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture — it's a really stupid thing to want to do.”

— Elvis Costello

This has commonly been paraphrased "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." More info at "Alan P. Scott : Talking about music..." http://home.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm Also, Costello has denied http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/ having coined this, in an interview in Q magazine, tentatively attributing the quote instead to Martin Mull. <br class="br">Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Elvis Costello47

English singer-songwriter 1954

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“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

Martin Mull (1943) American actor

(on or before 1979), attributed in print in the magazine Time Barrier Express in the September-October 1979 issue in an article by Gary Sperrazza. Writing About Music is Like Dancing About Architecture: Laurie Anderson? Steve Martin? Frank Zappa? Martin Mull? Elvis Costello? Thelonius Monk?, Quote Investigator (blog), November 9, 2010 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/, <br class="br">Attributed

“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

“Nobody wants to be dancing to political songs. Every bit of music out there that’s making it into the mainstream is really about nothing. I wanted to see if I could write songs about something important and make it sound like nothing. And it kind of worked.”

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“I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

“I write the lyrics first, then the music," he says. "I don't want to try to be someone I'm not, because people easily see through that. So I only write about my own experiences, things I know and enjoy. Like my pets. I can't write about lovey or coupley things.”

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In regards to his own music:

“The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

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“…that's really the first thing to say about Speer's architecture. It was just awful. A genius without talent, he was essentially a theatrical personality, with enough gumption to be quiet about it.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Ibid.
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“The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.”

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“I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future. People who do not want writers to write about violence want to stop them writing about us and our time. It would be immoral not to write about violence.”

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“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture — it's a really stupid thing to want to do.”

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