'Despacito' was a song that, from the time I started writing it, I felt that its hook was really catchy and powerful but at the same time very simple.
The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?
I think, for me, one of the biggest things that I struggle with is keeping the excitement up when writing a song. A lot of times, I'll get pretty frustrated early on.
I have a younger brother and sister who actually play in my band, and we were always into Disney music, big time. The first time I heard myself sing was when I recorded myself singing a Disney song. I remember it because it was awful, and I didn't expect to hear that. I think it was 'A Whole New World' from 'Aladdin.'
One of them would definitely be the Nelson Mandela gig, when I played the tribute song for him. He was up and dancing, and he really enjoyed it. It was a really lovely occasion.
We were about ready to go out on the road with Maiden, and Kerrang asked us to do an Iron Maiden tribute song. While we were home, we recorded that. And that was it.
I think it's his perception of knowing how to make a record build, keeping the integrity of the song in the music and really adding a lot of musical elements to compliment my voice and to compliment the song.
When I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I'd come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand's records. And she was very young then. I think she probably had three records out, and she was 21, and we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it.
You don't play around with a good song. You try to just say it right in the proper place, and if you get the music and voice in tune, you'll be all right. That's always worked for me.
When you listen to my music, you hear that there are all these voices going on in different parts of the song. That's because I was always around so many voices in church.
I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn't anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.
'Prima Donna' is my kind of love song to opera but it's not the full experience.
I think a good song is a good song is a good song.
You can either make it come around or you can't. By the time we would be ready to record a song, we would know for sure that it was the best way we could do it.
I just kind of go with what I am feeling and don't think I have any kind of recipe for it... I mean, that's what drew me into writing. It's fun, and sometimes you don't get a great song. Sometimes you do.
But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.
As the writer, you're always a presence in the song. If you get close to what human beings are like, you're writing about common experience. We all do much the same things, so if you nail somebody, then you've also nailed yourself.
I make the songs and part of making them is singing them. But what you hear is not me. It's the song. It's through me.
There are no rules to writing a song.
I play a Monk song, it's like you get possessed. And then you have to break that spell. You have to remind yourself that you are an individual, or that you aren't Thelonious Monk.
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
'Spectrum' is in part a disco song. But we play it hard, and it's a real euphoric, wailing tune. It's kind of like a total house anthem, in a way, but it seems to be going down really well. We've got all the grunge kids going mad for disco house raves.
I have a passion for music, and I enjoy the process of expressing myself within the parameters of a pop song, and I don't do it to seek anybody's approval, necessarily. Obviously, you go on stage, and you enjoy it when people respond to a particular song, but the overall concept of playing music I do for myself.
I do not mind having written the song at all. I just wish that I had written it in a different key, as the high d is hard to play. I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.
The 'Downward Spiral' album was a record all about beating everybody up - and then 'Hurt' was like a coda saying maybe I shouldn't have done that. But to make the song sound impenetrable because I thought it was a little too vulnerable, I tried to layer it in noise.
A good country song takes a page out of somebody's life and puts it to music.
The fact is that 'The Wizard Of Oz' has never really worked in the theatre. The film has one or two holes where, in the theatre, you need a song. For example, there's nothing for either of the two witches to sing.
Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records.
Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series 'M*A*S*H,' and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet!
Feeling has as much to say as the words do. You can have the greatest words in the world and if they're not believable, they don't strike a chord and they're not said convincingly, it's not a great song.
In some ways, I've always approached singing as acting, and the voice is just like a way of carrying the song.
What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? 'Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.' I think of that. No big deal. I've reached a stage in my life where I am content.
But there's actually a lot of punk bands out there that go out of the norm, use odd time signatures, or a lot of different tempo changes in a song.
I have about 100 gigs of music, and I'm always going through thinking about what song I can match to a scene and all that.
My own personal favorite Cher song is the unforgettable Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.
A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
