I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines.
I'm an older woman who's not going to have a shiny pop song ever again, so that gives me license to do whatever the hell I want.
I've never really gotten into the whole labels thing. There were times I would cover a pop song, and people would say 'You sound really country.' I gave up on that whole thing a long time ago.
I love the song 'Into the Night.' It's Roy Orbison meets David Lynch meets Iggy Pop on amphetamines. It has a punk edge that is not HIM, per se. It is super melodic and super '60s, and that is very new to me and it is a sense of achievement to me.
My song 'Play It Again' is a perfect example of my music because the verses go so hard, and they're so urban; and then this pop hook comes out of nowhere and socks you in the face and makes you want to dance.
I think women in pop have been declawed and defanged, and they're just meant to look pretty and sing pretty. You don't really hear a female perspective on the radio, because so many of the songs are being written by men.
Tom: It's these cards and the movies and the pop songs, they're to blame for all lies and the heartache, everything.
Any kind of anthemic song, for the most part, they're on the positive side of things. It's not hard to identify when a melody is just one degree too complicated or one degree too simple and where that line of pop memorability lies.
If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.
I'm still looking for the rules of what is and isn't pop music. I'm pop. I mean, of course I am. What isn't pop? There should be a pop amnesty where everyone reclaims it.
When I say I don't have to write pop songs anymore, there's no way I'm going to get on the radio at 60 years of age unless I'm doing a duet with Gaga or I was on 'All of the Lights,' which was a Kanye West record that managed to get on the radio.
It's not my concern to make a commercial pop record. I want to make a record of music that I would listen to, that is lyrically rich and has songs that people can relate to - more along the Jakob Dylan route: people who create for the art of it and n...
The songs I've written that are the strongest, I'm like: 'I don't know where that came from. It just kind of popped out.' You feel you can't take a whole lot of credit for it. I didn't purposefully will it into existence.
You can get really left of centre influences in mainstream pop. Michael Jackson and Prince are some of the most progressive artists ever if you actually dissect their songs there's some crazy stuff going on.
I think, 'How could anybody mock a good pop song?' It is timeless; it transcends barriers; it breaks down every single type of social barrier that you can possibly have. It can deal with the most difficult subjects, even if it abstracts the subject m...
Sometimes when I get home after a long day, I'll turn on music - I love Latin, disco, and pop - and do my own workout, even if it's a short one. Know a good song to work out to? 'I Will Survive.'
I was at a picnic, and there were a lot of songwriters. I remember praying, 'God I wish you would give me a song.' About five minutes later, my ears popped, and I saw everybody in slow motion. Nobody knew what I was experiencing.
I used to watch 'Top of the Pops' when I was a kid and say 'Yeah!' or 'Boo!' at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another.
The title song of David Bowie's 'Young Americans' is one of his handful of classics, a bizarre mixture of social comment, run-on lyric style, English pop and American soul.
Sometimes you want something really serious that makes you feel emotional and makes you think, and sometimes you do just want a pop song. What I love about Taylor Swift is that she offers both.
Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.
