I'll never forget the dance number that I shot with Anushka. The choreography involved a lot of intricate dance moves. I'm at least 7 inches shorter than Anushka, so I had to wear the highest heels I've ever worn in my life; throughout the song, I even injured my knee a couple of times.
If you're working with a producer like Rick Rubin or whatever, you sing each line probably 30 different ways. Each time, they're like, 'Can you try it this way? Can you try it that way?' That's each line in the song, for each song.
Doing a scene truthfully is very similar to doing a song truthfully. They're really parallel.
My general audition song is almost always 'Man That Got Away.'
Every time one can write a self-deluded song, you are way ahead of the game, way ahead. Self-delusion is the basis of nearly all the great scenes in all the great plays, from 'Oedipus' to 'Hamlet.'
David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.
I think there's just so many people in the world that don't feel understood, and when you hear a song and you go, 'Oh, that song understands me,' that's an amazing feeling. I get it when I listen to the radio... That's a beautiful part of music.
I love that on country radio, you can hear a George Strait song, and the next is Sam Hunt. I love that there's such a variety.
I learned to embrace my individuality, and if that meant writing a song on one chord over and over again, then that's what I do.
I listen to everything and find parts about a song in the lyrics/melody/chords/production that I like and can be inspired by when I write my next song.
I hate being manipulated by song. Don't tell me what I should be feeling. I don't want cellos or violins to be telling me that I should be bawling right now.
I just want to make good music, and as long as I'm happy with it, the charting isn't that important to me. Although, the best feeling is having a song you're very happy with and also having it at Number One!
When we finished 'Stop Making Sense,' we went right to the San Francisco Film Festival for the world premiere, and people swarmed the stage and started dancing before the first song was even finished.
It's not hard to create a song, but to write a song that's really going affect somebody? That takes a hell of a lot of time.
When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that's not something I could do.
Some anthems are great for sports. You've got the Russian national anthem... 'O Canada,' how wonderful is that for hockey... but I chose the Italian national song because at my first World Cup, I saw the Italians play four times, and they won all four times - they won the championship.
I have this idealistic and maybe naive thought that almost any song can be anything. If you record one song today, it would maybe be exciting and cool. But I could record the same song next week and it would be something completely different.
I used to listen to a lot of music in my studio - all the time. But as far as the music that interplays with my work, what I've done and still do is keep a lyric book and song title. The material typically comes from Eartha Kitt, Betty Davis, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston.
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 to make it together.
My favorite song depends on the day, what I'm going through, what I'm feeling.
If you feel that you can just come in the studio and freestyle on my song, then I'm ready to rap battle you. That's just how I feel about it because I know I'm way harder than another rapper freestyling on my song.
I've always written pop songs. I tend to take inspiration from more experimental genres, like ambient music, but at the root of the song, it's verse-chorus-verse.
If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.
I kept thinking, 'How do you make a modern musical?' Then it became clear that I could do it just like a small indie art-house movie, very naturalistically. I could create a world where it's o.k. to break into song, without an orchestra coming up out of nowhere.
It's really weird when we're out of the country, whether we're in Brazil or Greece or some crazy place like France or Germany. When you hear your song on the radio or in a store, and you're in a different country, it's really freaky and surreal.
Writing-wise, I started when I was 17. Whatever was bothering me, I could just write about it in a song. I was in the west suburbs of Chicago, then I moved an hour south, and then I went to school up on the South Side - Saint Xavier, though I was at Purdue for a second before I dropped out.
I'm a producer first, and I know music, so I can jump on any song, whether it's pop or urban, without changing me. Whatever I do, I'm gonna make it classic.
I'm always writing. It might be a bad song, but I'm always writing.
The whole thing about playlists is what song comes next.
I've always wanted to do a cutesy little song with a guy and girl singing back and forth and thought that Regina Spektor would be kind of cool for that. I love her voice. She's an amazing musician.
A love song must respect the canons of music beauty, entering the fibers of those who are listening. It must make them dream and pleasantly introduce them to the universe of love.
If I'm not crying while writing a song, I'm not doing it right.
Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.