Nobody thinks mystery writers go around killing people, but they always seem to assume singers are singing about themselves, especially if you write melancholy songs like me.
I also wanted to make a record that was about other things than romance, yeah, after two years on the road singing all the songs from the first album, I got kind of tired of that.
Every man needs his Siren To check his courage and strength When he hears her song In his travels through the unknown.
You'll almost encounter a superstition amongst musicians, people sort of go through strange rituals, what they need to do to write a song.
I get sick when I think about someone going to iTunes and downloading two songs off our album. It's not meant to be listened to that way.
I have been consistent by staying true to who I am and will continue to sing the type of songs that those who have continued to support my career expect from me.
Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with? Probably the one that I haven't hung most with recently.
I like to think about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works with the band, and gives a spin to the older material.
That's where it begins and ends for me and these songs were the ones that touched me the deepest. It was like I was laying hold of some part of me that I didn't even know was there until I let it out.
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'
All our good and bad memories—they were like our B-side diaries. They were like those songs on old dusty punk albums that no one listened to anymore.
I would sit on the street corners in my hometown of Indianola, Mississippi, and I would play. And, generally, I would start playing gospel songs.
Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.
It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.
I know a lot of artists say this, but it's hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There's no tricks.
I think it was when I was 12 when I entered a singing competition. I sang my own original song for an audience of 1,000 people.
I have a song called 'Decisions' that features Jamie Foxx, Mary J. Blige, John Legend and Common. It's about people who have made a decision to really stand by you as friends.
With every song I have a person in mind who, in a perfect world, would perform with me. Usually I end up not getting that person, and I'm forced to settle for someone else.
In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.
All my songs were solo voices. Just me singing. In fact, that was the gimmick - no gimmick. Just singing straight with not too much background.
