My life is an open book; at least this photo album". ~R. Alan Woods [2013]
I could enjoy the simple life with a small living quarters, a scratched album of Johnny Cash and a Box of Twinkies
It becomes more important to me as time goes on to make every album the best thing I've ever done, so it's a lot of self-imposed pressure that also kind of slows me down a bit.
When I think about putting together an album, the process of listening to hundreds of songs each time and picking out the best 10 or so that will go on the record, it really sinks in as to just how many songs I've listened to all these years.
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 feel that I see John Lennon now as not a celebrity. I did then. I saw him as a cardboard cutout on an album cover.
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.
