Definitely scatterbrained. I internalize a lot of thoughts, and sometimes it seems like I'm not listening or totally zoned out, but I'm always on a loop of ideas and song titles. I'm definitely kind of a space cadet, but I'm very laid back.
I record stuff all the time, like little vocal things. I write random things down... Sometimes I just get things stuck in my head and I record them, and that actually becomes a song quite a lot of the time.
Thus we have at least a national song that unites all Germans, and is the symbol of our sixty-million nation.
I was invited to L.A. when I was 16 for a weekend-long songwriting session by a writer I had met through my voice teacher in Pittsburgh. My first hit, 'Hide Away,' was one of the songs written during those sessions. It was played for a radio rep who then started a new label; the song got a pretty organic start at radio and then took off.
This is the way I wanna die. Torn apart by angry fans who want me to play a different song.
I've always had a teenage thread running through my music. On my first album, I had a song called 'Confessions of a Teenage Girl.' It's about using your feminine wealth to get what you want.
The one album I can't live without is called 'Cumbolo' by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there's one in particular called 'This Train.' I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.
When I hear a great country song, I get chills and I want to cry. You feel something. And just sometimes that magic and the stars line up somehow or another, and it creates something that's really, really, really special.
Doing a musical is not just acting. It's total theater. When you have to justify the enormous projection of energy it takes to just go into song and dance, you realized why it's such a humbling experience every time you go into a show.
I've always been one of those people that, if I am angry, I just hold it in. And I always kind of, like, wrote it in a song and put it aside for myself because it helps me get it out. It's almost like exercising; it's almost like that for me.
I was so terrified before an audience that I would break out in these ugly red hives, and my lips would quiver at the sight of a word or a song.
I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called 'Rock Star,' which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, 'Why not play the drums?'
Musicians get tense at big gigs. Some you can't talk to before the concert; some you can't talk to afterwards; some need the same size dressing rooms as others; others need bigger; some have comments to make on others' musicianship or how a particular song ought to be played.
Not being a natural songwriter... for me the appreciation of a great song and the writers came early on, growing up in a musical family. My dad got to sing songs by some of the greatest writers of all time, Rodgers and Hammerstein.
There's a lot of instant spotlight and pressure when it comes to a Bond song.
Most of my songs have names of people I've met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.
Writing a song to be a single is hard, and I don't like to focus on that because you can get caught up in making something just terrible, which is really easy to do if you're focused on making it a single. It's more fun when you focus on what excites you musically.
At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.
Writing is my therapy. My feelings build up inside of me and then I sit down and write a song.
When I'm singing a song, I'm in that song, and I'm thinking about what emotions I should bring to the song. Voicing a character was very similar. It was high energy, and I had to really think about the emotion of what was going on in the scene.
The 'Billionaire' song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It's funny.
It's more difficult to write a song about having your heart ripped out of your chest while you're in love. Because it lacks honesty. And the honesty comes through in the music, it really does.
My first song was 'So Sick,' which was my first number one as an artist, and I turned the mic around to the crowd, and they sang the whole song. Every lyric. That was my first experience with the power of music.
Whenever I hear somebody cover a song, I don't like to hear it stray too far from the original. I like to hear some of the new energy that a band will put into it, but you kind of want to hear some of the basic parts of the song. I mean, that's what makes it the song that you like.
You could play the blues like it was a lonesome thing - it was a feeling. The blues is nothing but a story... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?
So pretty much, to sum it up, if you can freak someone out and bring that kind of emotion out of somebody with a song, you're doing something right.
Singing is how I express everything. Hunger, needing new clothes... it's all through song.
It was right after I dropped the song 'Don't,' and it started to go viral a little bit. That's when I was like, 'Alright, I might have something here.' Actually, I wasn't even going to quit my job, but Timbaland called me - we have a mutual friend - and he was like, 'Yo man, you need to work in Miami.'
I think my main two songs are 'FWU' and 'Get Away.' 'FWU' made a cool point because it came out right after Chris Brown's 'Loyal' came out. I combated it with 'FWU,' a song that basically says, 'These women are loyal.'
It is forbidden to go east, but I have gone, forbidden to go on the great river, but I am there. Open your hearts, you spirits, and hear my song.
I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.
I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.
'Carbs' is the first song I wrote, and 'I Wanna Boi' is the second song I wrote. I am very proud of every song I made since then. Anything I'm not proud of I wouldn't show people.
I don't mind Ed Sheeran, but I wouldn't want to be compared to a guy that builds his song around a guitar, since we do not have a guitar in our band.
I find that the time that goes by is actually your best friend when you are making a record. The passing of time gives you perspective on what you recorded and what you wrote. If something sounds good to you 12 months after you recorded it then chances are pretty good that there's something valuable about the part or the song.
The song 'Stick'? That needed to be chunky and sexy. It's human. It's human to be the girl in 'Stick' and feel spicy as heck.
