Ever since I was 2 or 3, I loved to perform for people. I would walk up to another table in a restaurant and crack a joke, sing a song, do a dance, or something entertaining, and the 'audience' would almost always smile and laugh.
Whoever best serves the song is going to be served by the song.
I love song writing, so I'm always happy to write for other musicians.
Not only is your story worth telling, but it can be told in words so painstakingly eloquent that it becomes a song.
The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.
Lyrically and thematically, the title 'Doctor Faith', that song is about therapy, psychotherapy, and that song is about emotions and personal insight. I think all the songs on the record sort of go along with that.
All the song choices that we've picked are unique in their own right. They're fun, and it's really just to engage our fans.
The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not.
When I realized I could write lyrics and let someone that I knew listen to them, but not know that the song was about them - say it was a girl. I could write this song about how I feel about this girl, I could play it to them. I just loved it, because all of the words would speak to them. I could see them slowly falling in love with me.
However long the song is was how long it took us to write it.
If my life were a song it would probably be titled 'Roller Coaster', up and down all the time.
One of my real goals was to hear someone whistling a song I'd written.
I think that commercials can really ruin a song. You know that the person sold the song for a good deal of money, and that was the tradeoff. But, music and picture can marry in a beautiful way, and the reverse also.
I learned when I started to study piano that I could play by ear. I could hear a song on the radio a couple of times and hear the song and the lyrics and sing it for you after a couple of plays.
All my music is autobiographical, and that's the reason why people like my music. They know when I'm saying something on a song, I mean it. It comes from a real place and captures the realness in my life.
Success, for me, is a song that can deliver shivers.
First play I ever did was 'Footloose.' I played the part of Willard when I was 16. I think I wore my drama teacher's jeans and her belt - that's how small I was. I know a lot of Willard's back story from the musical that's not explored in the film. Like he's got this whole relationship with his mama, and he sings this song 'Mama Says.'
I am not greedy, so I would gladly give a song to someone else to sing if it makes more sense.
One of the things that I think is such a constant in country music is that the song is so much a story. I believe it is supposed to be based around a story.
If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.
I wrote that song for my wife, and it's what some guy who's sitting under a tree would be singing to the woman of his life, telling her how wonderful she is. To me, that's more lasting than something that sounds like it belongs on a movie soundtrack.
I try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isn't a song that I need to sing.
So writing a song is much harder than doing a classical piece for me, because in a classical piece, I can just let the mood dictate what's going to happen.
Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!
There are pretty girls all over the place. But there are still a lot of people standing strong, doing their thing in loving relationships, actually staying true. I wanted to write an honest love song from that point of view.
I'm a huge Joe Nichols fan, and he put this song out an album called 'Real Things.' I was excited for Joe when I heard it, thinking 'that will easily be Joe Nichols' career song.' I was even more excited when they got out of that album and they never released it as a single, because then I was like, 'Now that's gonna be my career single.'
The way to do it is to put as much life into the song as I can. You can either get it to breathe or you can't.
I'm not a person you can figure out in one month. And you can't listen to one song and say, 'That's who he is.'
It's a marvelous feeling when someone says 'I want to do this song of yours' because they've connected to it. That's what I'm after.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song. What do I write about? I never know.
If you're writing anything decent, it's in you, it's your spirit coming out. If it's not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it's not a good song done with any conviction.
If I would make a song dedicated to any woman, it would have to be my mom because, you know, she's been there since I came out of her. She would have to be the one... my mom or my daughter.
To me, there is nothing more soothing than the song of a mosquito that can't get through the mesh to bite you.
With Rock Band, you can play along to Black Sabbath or Nirvana and possibly find new ways of appreciating their artistry by being allowed to perform parallel to it. Rock Band puts you inside the guts of a song.
There is no way I will survive Mike Pence doing Carpool Karaoke. What song's he gonna sing? 'I Deported Your Grandmother?'
I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.
