In an age of incompetence, I've been able to last in this crazy business. I actually know how to play my ax and write a song. That's my job.
I had kids at age 47, and very late in life, and I'd been doing it for 30 straight years, writing songs, making a record and touring and starting the process right over.
At the age of eight, I discovered that I could write songs. My dad used to take them to the notary and register them so that nobody could steal them from me.
My nails are my rhythm section when I'm writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.
Please Mia," he implores. "Don't make me write a song.
When you research prolific songwriters, it is usually later in their career they write songs that they distance themselves from, or it's about other people.
I've just been recording mostly acoustic stuff, drums, and sax, and electric guitar. I'm just still writing songs and what not.
Writing songs about fancying people in dance clubs is all very well but it's not the be-all and end-all. There are other topics.
When I'm writing a song, it gives me more actual pleasure to hear someone else sing it than do it meself.
Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.
Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.
They can sonically sound like me, but nobody's ever gonna be able to write songs like T-Pain. There's only one of those.
I would be too self-conscious if I just thought of writing lyrics for a song. I have to trick myself into doing it.
I write almost every single part of my songs, even the actual drum parts sometimes, whether they be simple or layered with many different instruments.
You cannot teach a person how to write songs. It's about being your own person and following your instincts.
I'm always asked if the songs that I write are therapeutic, and my answer is a quick no. In fact, it could be argued that they exacerbate my neurosis.
I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs.
I write most of my own lyrics for my album and I am helping to produce some of the songs as well.
My songs are very personal, which means they are fantastically therapeutic to write, but performing them night after night is emotionally draining.
I had always wanted to write a song called, The Vicious Circle. I always thought it was like, the kids are born there, they grow up there, they die there.
People have said to me, You can't write songs. You can't play an instrument. But I've got 10 gold records.
