I used to do karaoke with Patrick Woolf in a karaoke box, and he would ring me up and say, 'Come down and do karaoke with me here,' and then we'd sing Kate Bush songs and get really, really emotional and theatrical in the booth.
You see the genius that Whitney Houston has as an interpreter of material, and you realize why genius can be applied to only a few interpretive performers. She finds meaning and depth and soulfulness in a song that often the writer and composer never...
I was never encouraged to do it and I played the accordion, which I hated. I wish I had taken piano because I definitely would have written more songs of my own, but I didn't.
Talk about songs that make me cry: Track 7 on the 'Phineas and Ferb' soundtrack, 'Summer (Where Do We Begin?).' When you get to the part about sitting with your brother underneath the shade of a big tree in the backyard, ohmygod. Turn on the waterwor...
You know when I really realized like 'wow' what a gift this is was when I sang at camp and a girl wrote me a letter and said the song that I sung kept her from committing suicide.
NW" is full of split selves, people alienated from the very things they thought defined them. Their nostalgia -- for old movies, old songs, buses they don't ride anymore -- is less a salve than a form of pain.
Everyone who moves to New York City has a book or movie or song that epitomizes the place for them. For me, it's 'The Cricket in Times Square', written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams.
Jay-Z called me onstage during my song that I produced for 'Watch the Throne?' That was surreal, man. One of those situations I'll never forget. I'll be able to show my kids the footage of when Jay-Z brought me onstage.
I consider the piano my 'main' instrument and have been playing for as long as I can remember. It seems to me that I might have come up with something resembling a song as early as 4 or 5 years old.
Most people in the U.K. discovered me playing a standard on Parkinson. In America, it was on VH1 singing an original called 'All At Sea,' which is a contemporary pop song. So the people that know me there tend to think of me in the singer/songwriter ...
You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.
I just have a thing in my brain that when I'm about to do something that's genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I'll be like, 'Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.'
Ever since I've been young I've been fascinated by the human body. I've written songs about it, but you can become quite morbid if you think about it too much - paranoid and a hypochondriac.
'Human' was controversial within The Killers way before it was controversial to the rest of the world! It caused some problems within the band. Not to throw anybody under the bus, but it was pretty much me and Dave against Mark and Ronnie for a littl...
Every few years, I go back into all the songs and I update them so that it never sounds like an oldies show. If you come to the shows, they're full of muscle. 'Copacabana' sounds like it could have been released yesterday.
My buddies worked with me for weeks, and I went up to take my test, and started crying because I couldn't remember the words. I can remember songs. If you put it to a melody, I would have sung it to 'em in a minute.
I think what it means to be an 'American Girl,' and what I wrote the song about, is our freedoms. The idea that we as Americans can be what we want to be and say what we want to say and that we take it for granted.
I keep these songs in my head until I get behind the microphone. I never spend more than 30 or 40 minutes singing the vocal or it will sound mechanical. There are always mistakes, but it's about feeling more than being perfect.
For me, I really feel like if there's not a real, true connection to the material, I don't need to sing it. I don't need to sing songs just because I like them anymore. I've done that.
The jazz chord substitutions in a country song... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.
Saying you have a political solution is like saying you can write a pop song that's going to stay at the top of the list forever. I don't have many illusions about this, but I'm not cynical about it.
