But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.
It's not just about getting a song on the radio or appearing on television. It really is about helping people change their lives one day at a time.
When you're walking down the street or in the car just listening to the radio, and you're, like , 'Oh, that's my song.' You want to say, 'Hey Mom!' That never changes.
I don't think radio is selling records like they used to. They'd hawk the song and hawk the artist and you'd get so excited, you'd stop your car and go into the nearest record store.
Of course, I'm older now. I'm in a different place in my life than when I wrote the songs for 'Car Wheels' or 'Essence' or whatever. Different things were going on.
I don't like to feel like I'm in a club when I'm in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.
The vocal arrangements are a big part of the formula for a Bad Religion song - layered harmonies and background vocals. So when I start to describe the elements of Bad Religion's sound, it starts to sound like a Christmas choir.
Songs that aren't even remotely connected to Christmas are now officially canonized Christmas tunes. 'Frosty the Snowman,' 'Jingle Bells' and 'Winter Wonderland' never mention anything religious but are still notches in Christmas' belt of musical dom...
When I was five my parents bought me a ukulele for Christmas. I quickly learned how to play it with my father's guidance. Thereafter, my father regularly taught me all the good old fashioned songs.
We would make songs, and the producers said we should play it for my dad. I was kind of scared, I didn't know what to think cuz we were just joking around.
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
We didn't rehearse or play the songs to death before we recorded them, and that let us catch a freshness and energy level we've never really felt while making records.
The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.
The fundamental human truth underpinning 'Ox Mountain Death Song' is that men so very often turn into their fathers. The way that everything gets passed down.
When we play 'Angel of Death', it's actually a 2 and half minutes sing 'til our party starts. That song is pretty much been played traditionally in the end.
I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!
Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there's great truth in the songs, and that's what was so wonderful to find.
You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that's great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don't want to get in the way of the song.
I do not think men have more talent. There are a great many women in the arts; novelists, painters, sculptors, poets-but the proportion is far lower in the field of song writing.
You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but, in the need, that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.
I can only say thank you and thanks also to all of the great songwriters who wrote those wonderful songs that became number ones.
