'Human' was controversial within The Killers way before it was controversial to the rest of the world! It caused some problems within the band. Not to throw anybody under the bus, but it was pretty much me and Dave against Mark and Ronnie for a littl...
Every few years, I go back into all the songs and I update them so that it never sounds like an oldies show. If you come to the shows, they're full of muscle. 'Copacabana' sounds like it could have been released yesterday.
My buddies worked with me for weeks, and I went up to take my test, and started crying because I couldn't remember the words. I can remember songs. If you put it to a melody, I would have sung it to 'em in a minute.
I think what it means to be an 'American Girl,' and what I wrote the song about, is our freedoms. The idea that we as Americans can be what we want to be and say what we want to say and that we take it for granted.
I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it's about feeling more than being perfect.
For me, I really feel like if there's not a real, true connection to the material, I don't need to sing it. I don't need to sing songs just because I like them anymore. I've done that.
The jazz chord substitutions in a country song... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.
Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to stay at the top of the list forever. I don't have many illusions about this, but I'm not cynical about it.
My father used to tape 'Top of the Pops' for me every Sunday, and I would sit in my bedroom, write down the lyrics of all of my favourite songs, and sing along. I was always singing in my bedroom with a hairbrush.
I have no problem with people illegally downloading stuff. I'm not going to drive hard into 'You should buy my stuff,' because really, it's inevitable. If you like a song, you're going to download it for free. I have no problem with that.
With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song.
I keep a journal and just kind of take notes. I don't really so much sit down and write songs - I just take a lot of notes, and sometimes I sit down and put them all together.
I remember being at the premiere of 'Beverly Hills Cop II' and the tremendous reaction from the crowd outside, then going to a party at a hotel afterwards where the speakers were blasting 'Shakedown,' a song from the movie. That felt like a show biz ...
Believe me when I say this: you can't please everyone in concert, even though I still want to. Someone always wants you to sing a song that isn't necessarily on your set list.
You dance love, and you dance joy, and you dance dreams. And I know if I can make you smile by jumping over a couple of couches or running through a rainstorm, then I'll be very glad to be a song and dance man.
It's very rare - and it does happen on occasion - where I'll take a piece of lyric and I'll just sit down and purposefully craft that melody around that lyric because I think the lyric is the wellspring for the song, without question.
I like the sounds of EDM; the guys create new sounds, beautiful sounds. The melodies, it's a little less. I like the kind of melodies I did with Donna Summer, or 'Flashdance,' where you have a verse, a chorus - a song setup.
One day. I was putting on a hill in Zurich, and a few hundred yards away, Diana Ross was doing a sound test at an arena for a performance that night of 'Take My Breath Away,' my song with her. That was a very nice game, an incredible feeling.
All the signs were right. And when I mean all the sings were right, the only signs that we care about when we start a project of making a record is, do we have the songs - it's that simple.
Just with the basic one guitar, one piano and one vocal and an audience, I think that the intimacy comes through more. People feel much more connected to the song because there's nothing in the way, and I actually enjoy doing that.
I do get a bit of a sense, just from e-mails some people send me, just a little sense of how people in different countries seem to respond differently to certain lines in a song.
