You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb. There was no music at all.
I try to make an album that reflects what I love about country music. It's not just all about happy parties all the time. There are some sad songs.
Right now the focus is the album that is released and then the tour coming up. After the tour they will let us know about the options and offers that came in for us.
I had no idea 'The Dream Weaver' would be so successful. Everything just fell into place with that album. I pioneered a number of ideas with that album and subsequent tour. The all-keyboard approach with no guitars was a new one, and I was one of the first to use a drum machine in concert. It was an amazing time.
If we could sell 100,000 units every album, that would rock. We'd have a big cult following, we'd have a built-in fanbase so we could pretty much play anywhere, people would show up and rock out.
You continue to evolve with each album that goes by and, as an artist, you continue to expand with every recording project.
Rock and Roll Over' was the first Kiss album I heard, but I was totally oblivious to their whole image and the makeup and all that. I was so out of touch with the wider world.
I want to figure out what kind of artist I want to be, because with the 'American Idol' process, it just works really fast. The night of the finale, they said, 'OK, here are all the label people that you're gonna work with, this is the album you're gonna make and blah, blah, blah.' So it was a pretty fast process, but it's been cool.
It's a phobia I have. I never assume I'm going to be able to write another album after I finish one.
I'd like to do a pop album with an R and B influence. I definitely want to have those big ballads with the uptempo hits as well.
I loved the last album, and it was one hundred percent me. But this is like me two years later, who understands a little bit more about music and understands a little bit more about making an album. I wrote a lot more.
I learned to play drums to the 'Blue Album.'
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.
And it wasn't until '84 when I was first asked to come to Sweden and do an album and concert tour.
It's about giving the people what they want. So many people have told me that they've made love to my records so what I've delivered this time is an album about sex. Pretty much every song has that theme. Straight no chasers, it's booty music!
A single is really quick, man. You can get it out, and in two months have it on your merch table. And albums can take a really long time. But when you get done with an album, it's a lot more fulfilling.
I wanted to write a book like a rapper would write it - I didn't want to hold back. Rappers catch a lot of slack; I'm not going to be cursing up a storm, but when I look at Nas... his first album is one of my favorites. I want to tell stories like that.
We're probably doing better business than we thought we would do especially considering the disappointing way the record company has handled the album.
What I don't do is try to like become whoever I'm rapping with. The people who go get an LL album want to hear LL.
Nothing me and Kanye can do musically was gonna match the event of what we were trying to do. So we were trying to deliver an album and experience at one time; that was the idea for 'Watch The Throne'.
I really can't blame anyone but myself, because I didn't have to deliver the album. But when you get caught up in the gas, and you're young, and there's so much helium going on around you, you can't decipher the real end.
'Close to the Edge' is the album where we first attempted to do the extra-long-form piece of music, having one song taking up the whole side of a piece of vinyl.
Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.
I got a couple on per album but my problem was that I wanted to sing the songs and not let Roger sing them.
The bar was very high-we had to really make sure that we got what we really wanted, that it was a real finished album. We weren't going to give up until we got that.
I have put absolutely everything into my album. I feel like it's been such a long journey to get here. It is like giving birth to my first child, and I want to make sure I did everything right.
I like to call it 'album making' because everybody hears the word scrapbooking and thinks, 'All the glue and the glitter - I don't have time for that!'
Any album that I ever put out I'm going to send it to country radio first.
I didn't start writing songs, honestly, until I started making my album. I was always doing poetry, but I never thought I could write songs. I discouraged myself and thought it was so hard. But starting this process and learning just what it is to be a songwriter and performer taught me that you don't have to feel discouraged about anything.
I thought I'd do everything on four-track, and then I'll record every instrument myself in a studio, and then I'll have a solo album released by spring.
I just kept it real and had the freedom to do what I want. It's not designed for any age group. It's not made for radio. There are no edits. The whole album contains explicit lyrics but that's because you need it.
I want to be the kind of artist who keeps pushing on every album. I don't want to settle on a sound.
Even though I had pushed through the Tango album, it was just not a very good environment to be in on a daily basis. In many ways, this is the best time of my life.
I did the Broadway album unfortunately in a year when there were no hits.
On the first album I was saying, that's just one part of me. And then I was thinking, well, am I going to hide the rest of me now just because I'm afraid of something? No. I'm just going to be myself.
When I record an album I'm trying to get as close as possible to that perfect moment.
