Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn't all of a sudden make us best selling authors.
I look at rap as an opportunity to act. My head is full of different characters - in each song I'm auditioning a character.
If you hear a song and you like it, you like it.
Listen to the Beatles' 'Things We Said Today.' Ringo Starr does not play a fill in the entire song. It doesn't need it. 'A Day In the Life' has gorgeous fills, but there, the song needs it. When I play on any record, I'm striving to get where Ringo is. You play what doesn't take you out of the song.
Music makes time fall away like almost nothing else. You hear a song from another moment of your life, and it really is like you're still there.
I've never wanted to name an album from a song title if I could avoid it because I like it to be a body of work.
I like to know why a video has suddenly gone viral, why a song has broken, why a TV show is suddenly rating out of pattern... I'm pretty good at understanding why things are becoming popular.
I try to imagine how we would live if we didn't know we were going to die. Would we live our lives differently? Less careful, maybe? Less scared? These are beautiful things to think about and build a song around.
I'd love to cover an 'Incubus' song. I don't think anybody in a cowboy hat on a country stage has ever done that, and I'd love to be the first.
Just the other day I pulled out this old cassette of Ragged Glory and I popped it into my cassette player and I was digging it. They were just a great rock and roll band, one that presents the song ahead of everything else - there's no grand idea or concept behind it.
There's many, many ways to write a song. But generally, sitting down at a table and writing is not one of them.
Basically, in 'American Pie,' things are heading in the wrong direction. It is becoming less ideal, less idyllic. I don't know whether you consider that wrong or right, but it is a morality song in a sense.
Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.
There was a moment when Prince did rock & roll with a sponge-y seductive sound. I think that's what was in our head for 'Get On Your Boots.' But actually, the song is much more punk rock.
I don't think there's anything wrong with not knowing how to play an instrument, but the rise of the non-musical producer has done away with musicianship and focused attention purely on the song's hook.
What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.
When you work with a band, obviously you've got to present them with something they can get a hold of, so it has to be a little more fleshed out as a song. And then where it goes is more collaborative, obviously; it's more political possibly, certainly more a conscious process than a subconscious process, which the painting can be.
A close-up on screen can say all a song can.
I think 'Country Girl' is one song that can veer into country or hip-hop or rap. You can listen to it and enjoy the humor and the fun in it.
I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.
Even if it was a difficult operation to copy a song, it only takes one person to do it. After that the spread of the song via the Internet or other means of propagation is only limited by the honesty of the users.
The first person that I ever heard sing a song I wrote was Jason Derulo. I was in the studio when he was doing it, and I mean, I've heard that guy's voice my whole life. When he was singing words I wrote, I started kind of choking up, but I tried to be all manly and puff my chest up and be all, 'Yeah, it's not a big deal.'
Talking about covers, whether visually or sonically, if a particular combination of notes struck a chord in your heart in a way that you want to be a part of it by covering that song, then there's nothing wrong with it.
I tried to make a 'When Doves Cry' in a rap version. I used a lot of instruments and I broke it down like I thought Prince would do, and that's the song I sent to Big Boi.
There's something inimical about the camera and song.
When I picked up guitar, it wasn't like, 'OK, I'm going to be Kenny Chesney.' It was like, 'I want to play a chord,' and then it was like, 'I want to play another one, then play a song, then sing while playing the song.'
My favorite punk rock song is 'Linoleum' by NOFX. That's pure harmony, the coolest chord changes.
Where I grew up, in the Detroit area, there was a really good station. Sometimes you would hear songs for the first time on the radio, and if a really special song came on, somebody would turn it up, and everybody would just stop talking.
Songwriter friends will be like, 'Oh my God, when are you going to put out 'Love Triangle?'' It's just been that song for me that really helped me get a lot of writing sessions and helped jump-start my writing career.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
I have never sung a whole song on my own before and I am not the best dancer in the world, but I would rather try and fall than not not try at all.
'Bruce Lee' is the fastest film in my career. But the quality is also very high. The last song was shot continuously for 24 hours. We worked like robots for that song, but the quality is outstanding.
You know, that single girl life and that sense of isolation - that doesn't leave you just like that. And that's what that song is about. I remember that, and that is imprinted on me, that sense.
I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.
After a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light in the words of the popular song the 'Age of Aquarius,' the time of the mind's true liberation.
Radio has had my back since 'Missin' You Crazy,' which was a very traditional kind of song.
