We didn't want to worry about the formula that has been implanted into our brains - this verse/pre-chorus/chorus format. When we were writing 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea about any of that. We didn't know how to count bars or how to writ...
I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that's fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that's fine. And it might not be right, because I'm the only one who knows what these songs...
I want to make myself and the crowd happy by way of something different, and that makes things difficult. I'm never playing something that hasn't been released or no one has ever heard before because I care to deliver them what they were hoping to se...
My biggest advice for girls - and this is something that I wish I could have known when I was younger - is to have thick skin. It's something that you definitely develop when you get older, but when I first started, I was so obsessed with pleasing ev...
When I first was trying to play the clubs around Houston to start playing my own songs, songwriters like Eric Taylor and Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt and Don Sanders were just really encouraging to me and would let me sit in with them during their...
Letting him go There is a particular kind of suffering to be experienced when you love something greater than yourself. A tender sacrifice. Like the pained silence felt in the lost song of a mermaid; or the bent and broken feet of a dancing ballerina...
I think, when I started writing songs, my voice just became another tool. It wasn't something that I was going to try desperately to woo a listener. As long as I'm using my voice in a way that helps people understand what I'm trying to say, then I fe...
Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don't go there to swim, then those youn...
nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look--my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Tou...
I have the most eclectic audience - I've got gay, I've got straight, black, white, rich, poor, young, old, in 45 countries. And they don't all come because I'm the Sinatra kid, though that's a big part of it. My biggest successes have come from pop s...
If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the b...
The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordina...
This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...But you must play your part and sing a song, one of your ...
I am in love, I became an angel; flowers bloom with my touch, birds comes to me and sing love song, air touches my cheeks to feel my love, leaves are dancing around me with the melody of love. Oh love, I am in love, I am the love.
…suffering can be a work of art. It can be made of buried and rising things, helpless and undiscovered, song of frustrated want, silence after desire. It can be the test of the self falling short, constrained, distorted, disturbed or rebuffed, the ...
We all have, in my family, what we call the 'Vorderman bottom' - a sticky out, bigger-than-normal, signature, of the rear variety. It's been a family joke all our lives - even my lovely brother has one. I know the lines to all the good singalong big ...
My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to...
If you say, 'I'm going to cut this song because I know the teenagers are going to love it,' well, then you're going to alienate everybody else. When I cut my record, I'm just going to cut the things that I like, and whoever likes it, likes it. That's...
I feel like my music is just an extension of my acting. I treat the songs like scenes that tell a story... it's very similar. My favorite thing is when cartoon fans show up to my live gigs! They are always the most kick-butt audience members 'cause t...
I think I'm better at live shows than I used to be because I'm way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I'll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people ...
We have a song like 'Ready to Love Again' that is really, really special to me. It's the one that I relate to the most. It's very personal, so we really allowed ourselves to go there and be vulnerable and show the fans that we feel and we hurt and we...
