I think a song that's got something to say. I'm not much on gimmicks. I never have been because they don't last. But I like a song that tells a story and has some meat to it, you know, that means something.
Stevie didn't use the technology to drive the song. He used it to enhance. I use the tools to further my work, I don't use my work to further the tools.
A lot of writing I do on tour. I do a lot on airplanes. At home, I write a lot, obviously. When I write a song, what I usually do is work the lyric out first from some basic idea that I had, and then I get an acoustic guitar and I sit by the tape recorder and I try to bang it out as it comes.
It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.
Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it.
I just try to get inside the song and imagine what comes next.
Strangely enough, when the Sugababes' 'Freak Like Me' went to number 1, which was built around my 'Are 'Friends' Electric' song, I had another song called 'Rip' go to number 1 in the Kerrang TV chart, so I was pulling new people in from very different areas of musical interest. That was quite an amazing week.
We never thought 'Say Something' would be a holiday song. I'm still surprised that it's resonating at this time of year. Maybe that's why it's working so well - it balances out all the joy.
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.
Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited.
There's nothing like a good cheating song to make me want to run home to be with my wife.
It's a gift that I have and I became good at it. When I heard my first song I didn't even know that I could write songs.
I always like Madonna; any Madonna song is good for me. Old school Janet Jackson is always good. I usually go old school. It's very rare that I pick a song from nowadays.
But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.
I'm singing the music publisher's theme song - it ain't a commercial.
I recorded a song called, I Fall to Pieces, and I was in a car wreck. Now I'm worried because I have a brand-new record, and it's called Crazy!
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.
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
The name of the album is 'Non-Fiction'. And, I'm calling it that because the name of every song on this album is derived from a true story. Now, some of the stories are mine. Some of the stories belong to some of my fans.
What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.
Tori Amos had a major influence on how I craft words in a song.
If my life was a song it would be 'Who Let The Dogs Out'.
I couldn't imagine having to write a paper and have to think about what song I am going to sing.
Considering the amount of information we're bombarded by, it's amazing if a song can transcend time.
The song 'What Goes Up' was inspired as I was playing the piano and reminiscing about the Spaceship One launches I witnessed in the Mojave desert. It is an awesome thing to comprehend the magnitude of what a human being dreams and imagines can be realized.
Even Crazy Horses is a good song, by the Osmonds. I've known many bands who have covered that. It's just a great song. I bought it in a brown, paper bag because I didn't want anyone to know I had it.
You're always frustrated, you don't have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.
I realized I was gay in the shower one day with Barbra Streisand. It happened while I was lathering, rinsing, and repeating with Pert Plus. As I was belting out the chorus to my favorite song from 'Funny Girl,' 'Oh my man, I love him so, he'll never know...' it hit me.
Even in the beginning, when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song, as one songwriter to another, I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad.
Everything needs to be catchy because a listener is either going to stay with the song or lose interest in the first five seconds. But people also like those songs they can relate to and say, 'Yeah, I went through that.'
When I was child, I saw the 'Ram Leela' performed on stage. Now there is the film 'Ram Leela,' and its maker actually wanted me to do a song for Akshay Kumar in 'Gabbar.' Akshay was one of the first Bollywood A-listers to believe in me. We jelled before we jammed together.
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.
If my life had to be a song I would name it, 'Live every day like its your best day ever', because it pretty much is.
The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high.
For Stevie, the words are of prime importance; the song moves around the words, rather than the words moving around the song.
Most of our stuff was trial and error. You live with a tape recorder, you turn it on, you play the song and you listen to it.
