To the audience, it's like I'm changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show's almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.
Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.
My husband doesn't know what my songs are about - even when they're about him. He's very British in that way. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't want to be told.
Then on to all the terrific american songwriters, from Tin Pan Alley to the Beatles, from Bob Dylan to Paul Simon. Whoever wrote and sang in the song form I have appreciated.
My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it.
If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or, perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.
I try to keep my ear to the streets without sacrificing who I am as an artist. If a song needs a drum machine I'll use a drum machine. If it needs a drummer, I'll use a real drummer.
Most people didn't have the bandwidth to download whole albums. And so it brought back this cherry picking idea that the audience would focus on certain songs and possibly be the impetus behind what eventually got on AM radio: the single or whatever.
I'm the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that's horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.
It's kind of exhilarating, walking through a crazy, insane mob. The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.
When you write songs, you can't really point out the exact thing you're inspired by. It's more a state or a mood or an atmosphere that you're trying to put into words.
Sometimes you're trapped in writing songs and you don't have enough distance from what you do anymore and you need the talent and the years of other people to come and jump in.
Sometimes I wish I had taken the Bob Dylan route and sang songs where my voice would not go out on me every night, so I could have a career if I wanted.
Songs have taught me more about life than school ever has and how to follow my ambitions no matter what they are and how to live my life no matter the trade-off.
I started teaching myself guitar because I loved singing so much. Then one day kind of out of the blue I found I was writing a song. It just happened organically.
I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.
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.
And now that Martina McBride knows of T.I., and T.I. knows of Martina McBride, that made me very happy, too. It's introducing worlds to different people and bringing them together with a song.
For me, 'Atmosphere' was more about looking inwards and reaching out to people close to me. To emphasize the fact that I'm singing on the first single, this album is really more about me and songs that I've written instead of collaborating with peopl...
I am always getting ideas for song lyrics and keep a notebook handy. Nowadays, I take a laptop with me everywhere, because I have a stock of handwritten lyrics in it.
When I'm on a plane, I am the annoying person humming into my phone. Sitting there static with nothing to do, a lot of melodies come to me. So I've written a lot of songs on planes.
