I don't dream songs. I'm more apt to write dreams down and then to be able to interpret them into a song. I also tend to get up and write prose in the morning from which will come songs.
It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.
Sometimes, I write '60s or '80s style pop songs.
I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs.
I just always wrote songs as a side hobby. So it was sort of a natural thing to write comedy songs. But when I started writing songs, I wrote very serious songs. Or things that a 13-14 year-old would think are very serious issues.
I usually don't write songs by people calling me and saying, 'Write a song about this.' Usually I'm just going with what I want to write, so you never know.
Sometimes I get in writing moods and I want to write a song every couple of days. Then sometimes I may not write a song for three weeks. It's just according to how it's hitting me at the time.
The people at the record company had asked me if I could write a song about my life, my relationship with God, and where I'm from. Well, I can't write a song on purpose, my songs come in a moment of inspiration or desperation.
I'm not somebody who carries around a notepad and writes songs all day long. I don't imagine everything I think of is worth being in a song. So I tend to collect notes, and I set time aside to go to work and write songs.
With every album, the approach is find the best songs you can find, write the best songs you can write and try to sound better.
Smokey Robinson writes the heartfelt songs, whereas it was my job to write the songs about weakness and failure in love.
I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.
William Miller: Do you have to be depressed to write a sad song? Do you have to be in love to write a love song? Is a song better when it really happened to you? Like "Love Thing," where did you write that and who was it about? Russell Hammond: When ...
The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.
There's a saying, 'It's easy to write songs, but very difficult to write great songs.' I'm going through that right now.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.
I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.
It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.
I don't want to do children's music. I write kids songs, but the kids songs I write are for my kids - like when I'm putting them to bed. We sing some song that we made up but I don't want to make a record like that.
You're always going to write and draw inspiration from things that you're feeling, things that you've felt. It's kind of impossible not to unless you're writing a song and there's an exact scenario that you're trying to write a song for.
If I'm gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That's how it works.
