Obviously I try to make the best music that I can, but after about two years of making an album, you start to worry: 'Is it going to come out all right? Is it all going to sound churned out?'
'The Queen Is Dead' is not merely the Smiths' best album, but it is one of those timeless, perfect, inexhaustible artifacts that could only have been made by a gang of sullen, sun-deprived rock & roll boys fighting off adulthood tooth and nail.
Even though we didn't actually record it as the Move I had already written a song called 'Dear Elaine', which I subsequently put on the Boulders album. I thought at the time that was probably the best song I'd written.
I'm going to continue posting on my YouTube, which is youtube.com/nolansotillo. So I mean, if I get signed and come out with an album, it would be just another... that is a goal of mine.
I don't do something because I think it will sell 30 million albums. I couldn't care less. If it sells one, it sells one.
When 'Destroyer' was first released, we got a strong backlash from our hardcore fans. After six months, the album was dead in the water. The critics didn't think much of it, either.
I don't own an ABBA album, and I never had the urge to go and buy one. If you're just talking about well crafted pop songs, they were fantastic.
In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song 'Vivrant Thing' and 'Breathe and Stop' off the 'Amplified' album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.
Where I'm fortunate and why I think I've thrived and survived, through the not having albums out every year-and-a-half, is not taking the songs lightly and trying to make sure I've got consistency.
Those two songs condense the two albums. They also show what the audiences wanted. I was desperate to keep the band together and find something that the public would like.
And I'm not a personality; otherwise I'd be coming out with an album, performing on MTV. All that stuff is possible and I can do that tomorrow. I just have no need.
I think that's what most of us rappers do too often. We put too much information in some of our albums that could actually be on the next ones.
I think the first album I bought was The Jackson Five, but the first CD I was given was 'Cotton-Eyed Joe,' the single! Bless my mum - don't know what she was thinkin'!
I was in high school and I had an independent album out, and we kept sending that out, and I was doing shows. No one really dug it. It was very Americana and had a lot of folk elements in it.
When I started recording, I thought I'd be able to do all kinds of records: jazz, country, dance - and I've always wanted to do a gospel album.
If you look at my career, doing albums with Norah Jones, Justin Timberlake, Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne or KRS-One and Jean Grae, I can't be pigeonholed.
One Long Year was just a song here and there, and it was meant to reflect the mood that I was in but unfortunately it also reflected too little of any particular thing rather than hanging together as a whole album.
I like the idea of working in an album-sized chunk, you know, and I never looked at Nine Inch Nails as a project that would be a hit-driven, single-based kind of thing.
I put out one album one week, and I'm already worried about the next one. I feel a lot of emotion throughout the course of a day. But not to the point where you need to be worried about me.
I buy DVDs almost every week. I'm more of a film buff, so I usually buy more DVDs than CDs, but if I like someone's album, I will buy the CD of it.
I had just made this album called 'Mind Blow,' a CD-R release on Spirit of Orr. This was in 2003. Quite a few of the songs from 'Was Dead' were actually on that.
