You're an enormous sponge and everything goes in there and you squeeze it out in songs, I guess. And if you're a painter, you squeeze them out on to a canvas.
When making the first album, I think I wrote a song about every six months. The first album was so much about the vocals carrying it.
How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.
I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that - stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders.
I'm not really gonna stop. We've got so much stuff to do, so many songs we talked about, so many things to record.
Be the person you really are and not the person you'e allowed yourself to become," Kate said to Nikki. From 'Life Song
I try and make all my songs sound different from each other while doing it in a way that's still me. It's a tricky thing to do.
When I come up with an idea about the way I feel, I can really state it strongly in a song.
Writing a song is like playing a series of downs in football: Lots of rules, timing is crucial, lots of boundaries, lots of protective gear, lots of stopping and starting.
If you want to put out a song that you wrote yesterday, tomorrow go on Twitter, type in a new URL, and give it to the people!
I am not greedy, so I would gladly give a song to someone else to sing if it makes more sense.
As a kid, sometimes you have nobody to turn to. I could always go back to some of the sermons and talk to myself in a righteous manner and put that in a song.
When I started writing songs, I was doing it for myself and a small circle of friends. And gradually, over the years, an audience became involved.
If there's a criticism of 'Cassadaga' that I agreed with, it's that we left things in the oven too long, that songs were overstuffed, with too many ideas competing for space.
I've said before: 'If you're going to earnestly sing a song around a campfire, you'd better be a Muppet!' Or else we're just not going to buy it.
When you are pushing yourself to not go back to the same well, you're gonna come up with something different, or you'll find songs that are different.
I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.
I was once an extra in a Bruce Springsteen video where they did a live performance video at Tramps. I forget the name of the song.
I don't like giving names to generations. It's like trying to read the song title on a record that's spinning.
It'll be my luck that the worst candidate will pick up 'Fly Over States' as his election song. Then I'll be forever linked to that guy, whoever he is!
As a singer-songwriter, a solo artist with a guitar, I can only write so many weepie little bedroom songs.
