So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life.
I don't really see how any song can not feel contrived if it isn't honest, and how could I write honest songs if I don't write about stuff going on in my life and how I'm feeling?
When I first started making music, it was learning other people's songs and putting them onto four-track. Like Beatles songs and stuff. When I started writing, I used the singing side of the production as a vehicle for melody and lyrical ideas.
So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.
When I heard 'Moon River', at first I thought it was just a nice song, but then I started paying attention to the words and realized this song was about Huck Finn. I just love the words, that it's kind of you and me against the world, and we're going...
There's a certain feeling of giving, a certain feeling of generosity in love songs. When you sing a song of love, you're actually giving something to yourself, too. You're singing and casting these affirmations of love out into the universe. It reson...
I have more of a desire to write songs about being an independent woman than being in love, songs about getting up and moving on even if I have a broken heart.
I can play songs that I hear from a movie and just play it a few times on the keyboard. I will hit all the notes on the keyboard until I find the right key, and then I will play the rest of the song.
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.
It does not matter how sweet you can sing a song of love. You must know how to dance along with it. You can't dance "salsa dance" on a "reggae song".
People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.
'Nothin' on You' by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I'd been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.
I didn't say I wasn't gonna do rockabilly. I just said I ain't gonna sing no song that ain't a country song. I won't be known as anything but a country singer.
I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.
It'll be basically a live album, but it will also include songs, Judas Priest songs, the audience have never heard before, because we felt we wanted to give the kids something else, something they haven't already bought.
I like the songs to appear very simple and to flow by without any kind of hiccup, but there has to be this impression of other currents underneath. Like if the songs aren't, on some level, multidimensional, we lose interest in them.
But I'm not adverse to the idea of Torch Song as a musical. It would just be different. Because the play will always be there exactly as it was, and in a musical you could tell a lot of the story through songs.
I'm sure there's going to be some material from This Is Not Going To Be Pretty. I usually use that song to just introduce myself to the audience, although the patter in between the song is always different.
To look for some kind of insight or meaning in pop songs is not really - well there's plenty of other places where you should probably look first before you start looking for it in a pop song.
After playing so many songs in churches for eight or nine years, I've learned what songs people react to. Then I just had fun with the arrangements. That's how this album came together.
