For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.
I've always been able to get inside a song really easily, and if it's my song, I can make it seem honest.
Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.
I don't write happy songs. Who does? I don't know anybody who writes happy songs, really.
I've always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it's an unfolding of a story.
When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.
Five or six songs leaked from the original version of 'Encore.' So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.
I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that.
You're creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it's their experience, not yours. I'll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about 'my' broken heart.
This is the bunch of songs I did first, and it's just the type of thing I do. I am a Carter Family girl, so the record is book-ended with Carter Family songs.
That's why these songs have lasted as long as they have because they're just about feelings that don't change. They are love songs, they are not specific, those kinds of feelings don't change.
When I go to a gig and I hear a song that I really like, a song that hits home to me or hits an emotional nerve, if I could ever recreate that for someone, that would be the ultimate goal.
Everything was a song. Every conversation, every personal hurt, every observance of people in stress, happiness and love... if you could feel it, I could feel it. And I could write a song about it.
Sometimes a good love song can change the world and create positive energy more than any political song can.
It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.
This is my seventh decade... and every once in a while I get a hankering to re-visit these songs again... songs with which I have had a great relationship.
A great song is a great song, whether it's on vinyl or CD or cassette or reel to reel or mp3. Then again, that might be an overly optimistic view, but I do think that great music will transcend the medium in which it is delivered.
Songwriting is something I really need to work on. I don't have very many songs but I really love it. I would love to be a great song writer some day.
The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own.
It is such a gift to be able to write songs in general, but when you can share it with somebody, it is just such a pleasure. It is such a happy moment when you finish a song, and you are just like, 'Wow - that was great.'
I think I write very good songs. But I don't know if anybody could record my songs with as much fervor. They sound good sung by me, and they especially sound good with my band.
