Sometimes a song that didn't make one record will stay in my head for so long and just won't go away. I take that as a hint to keep 'em close and not forget about them.
When you're young, the goal is to have a hit. You get a little older and the goal becomes to get to make another record.
Love Comes Quickly is our favourite record ever, and it did really badly.
I pay such close attention of the record making process that most people would assume are very little and wouldn't be that big of a deal; the packaging, the title, and the harmonies, I think, are arguably as important as the lead vocals.
I got to realizing that I wanted to record, I wanted to experiment. And doing those same old songs the same old way - I said, 'I think it's time for me to have some fun.'
I would go to radio stations and they were supposed to be interviewing me and playing my record and they would say, We're playing too many women right now, we can't play your record.
We don't have to stand on a soap-box and preach because hopefully we're channelling it through the new record.
I'm delighted to be Number 1, but next week I don't want people to buy my record, I want them to buy Band Aid.
I've had such a great track record in making a huge profit when the movies are smaller.
'Sol Invictus' works like your basic FNM record: the sequencing is an artful job, hustling you politely through all the gentle, harsh, weird surprises that follow - and then when it's over, you get back on the ride and start over, just like Space Mountain.
When the label came to me to say, 'would you like to do another record,' I said, 'Well I got these sixteen songs sitting here, so let's do it.' And that was pretty much it... I never stopped writing, it's just the way that the business is now; you just try to find a different model.
I have a record that I'm so very, very proud of, and no campaign is going to take that away.
Record sales don't really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn't feel like he wasted his pocket money.
Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.
Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
I like Rick Ross as a person. I like Jay-Z and Kanye West as people. But I hate the companies that they record for.
We try and stay out of the corporate side of it. The band has never compromised. At some point in our career we could have made a certain type of record and sold millions of units, as they are called.
I suppose my Iranian identity is one of the driving forces for being a writer: I want to set the record straight about who I really am.
I do dig the White Stripes. I like the record they have out now.
So I did 'Something Happened on the Way to Heaven' and the original version is a ballad. The original Phil record is uptempo but we slowed it down and made it a ballad.
As a label, you have to treat every group and every record as a unique entity. I think that that has been our success, rather than relying upon a fan base.
I'll put my record of service up against anyone, bar none.
When I had a record deal in the '90s, that was my dream - to make an album like Barbra Streisand's Broadway album - and they laughed me out of the room. Broadway wasn't cool. But artists like Michael Buble and Josh Groban have brought the classic genre back to the forefront, so I'm trying to find my way inside that market.
Many great founders have one or more big failures on their track record. What makes them great is that they eventually succeed despite that.
There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.
If I'd just been interested in record sales, I would have taken one of the deals I was offered after 'Soapstar Superstar,' made a quick covers album and probably had some success for five minutes. I decided that wasn't for me.
I found with this record I had to really be strong-willed, because in the past I've tended to tinker and add a thing or take a thing away, and nearly always been wrong.
I'm introverted, and I pay attention to my muse... Record companies used to go mad and say 'We don't know the deal with you. You have no continuity at all. You give us 'Addicted to Love,' and you're a rock n' roll star, then you give us 'She Makes My Day,' and what's that?' But that was a hit, too. It either gets across or it doesn't.
I love the road. That's always been my goal. I've said that to many record labels. I want to make records. The road is my favorite. Some people hate the road, I love the road.
Sometimes, people will fight over five, six percent, because if it's a smash record, that can mean a lot of money. I don't really care.
We were number one most added at radio, when the single came out and that's much different. It took like eight months for any radio to happen on the first record, so a lot more support has happened right out of the box.
I was two and a half and my folks would put it on the record player and I would run around the house screaming, but I haven't been that hip since.
I've been through a lot, both personally and professionally, and the album that I started to record two and a half years ago is a different album from the one that exists today. I even changed the album title. First it was 'All I Want is Everything,' and now it's 'Jumping Trains.'
Most artists have contracts directly with the record company, and when they do music, all of their music is owned by the record company. But I did mine through a production company.
As much as people want to call me a bomb-thrower, look at my record.
Of course, I want to sell this record - there's no point making it otherwise.
