Music is so much fun because each song is like a film in itself. You get to go from beginning to end and interact and exchange energy with a live audience.
When I work with artists, I give them a general guideline of what my vision is. Then they're going to speak their minds on how they view it, too. The song that defines 'Neon Future' the best is the title track. I wrote that with Luke Steele of Empire of the Sun. It's through his words. We had an amazing songwriting session together, connecting.
For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.
The spooky thing is that two weeks before the Grammys, I wrote down my goals, and one of them was, 'To be on the top of the Billboard charts with a song I wrote and performed.' ... It's completely unheard of.
With Martha Stewart, the power of the brand, the power of television, taught me that if you can marry all those ingredients - like you marry a great song with a great artist - and get the right television exposure, then you've got something that really is going to be sustainable. You can expand and blow up.
If I had five minutes to live, I don't think I'd be bothered singing a song. I'd be dead, so it won't really matter. I'd have a glass of wine and a cigarette.
Something that I think extends to a lot of African cultures is that the line between performer and audience is blurry. My mom would lead the wedding song regularly, and she isn't a professional singer. Even as an audience member, you're expected to clap and sing the response to the lead.
One week you may be an actor, and the next week you had to be nimble enough to be a TV host. And the week after that, you might have to do some stand-up or be in an improv company or write and sing a song somewhere.
A lot of my friends send me Snapchats of when they're in the club, and they're like, 'It's your song!'
I grew up in some suburb, I'd come out with a song about potholes in my lawn.
Some artists will tell you that's all they want to do is write their own music, and that's great, but George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, they didn't write everything they recorded, and they've had major, major careers. I think it's all about the best song.
If I had to associate myself with one song, it would probably be Let Love Rule. It's so simple and to the point. It speaks for itself.
It's rather nice to think that a song such as 'What Kind of Fool Am I?' is a standard that will be around for many, many years.
We have to play 'Livin' on a Prayer,' 'Bad Medicine.' We have to play them, and we want to play them, and that's what we're supposed to do. It's like going to see The Beatles and them not playing your favorite song. It's not the right thing to do.
I would prefer it if people thought that I didn't work hard, that I just played the guitar for three minutes a week and was like, 'Check out this song - what do you think?' That would be ideal. I would prefer telling people that I'm just truly talented.
There's just something so special about 'God Made Girls.' It comes from a girl's perspective, and there's nothing like that on radio right now, and so I think that's what made us able to pick that song as a single.
I think there are some songs that stand the test of time better than others for sure. I think some songs go out of favour; I'll get sick of a song for a while, and I won't play it; then it'll make a comeback.
As I've gone along, I felt like I was discovering an aspect of my voice that I didn't know was there: an ability to interpret a song in a way that makes it more accessible.
'Tis easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows along like a song; But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong.
Of course, 'I Will Always Love You' is the biggest song so far in my career. I'm famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.
I learned it was crucial to play right on the edge of the beat... It makes you drive the song more. You're ahead of the beat, but you're not.
I always like a good song: puts me in a good mood.
People do notice me - I'm always so surprised. When I dyed my hair blond for 'Suburgatory,' people would still recognize me from 'The Last Song,' when I had red hair, and I didn't even recognize myself.
The Haisla named this point Obela. Not so long ago, the bay was lined with longhouses and canoes, totem poles and fishing gear. The reserve was once a winter village, a place to celebrate the sacred season, when memories passed in dance and song and stories from one generation to the next with great feasts called potlatches.
To have a song work for the movie, it can't just be written apart and shoved in. It's got to come out of the action. It's got to talk about the characters, not the story: it has to augment that action.
My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible.
If you go back to 'Pretty Fly,' it was a very popish song, but there was a satirical side to it, and I think that's cool. I like the idea that it's making people think just a little bit.
I sang the 'Sunday Night Football' theme song two years in a row - my first part in American culture, although I still don't know anything about American football.
Every single song that I've listened to is in my memory forever.
A good folk song tells you something you already know, in a form you're already familiar with, on terms that were set down long before you were born - when the country was primarily windblown dust, open wagon trains, and dysfunctional towns like Deadwood.
I would love to have a song that I wrote by myself to win a 'Song of the Year' award.
I think 'Lovin' Feelin' was probably one of the most - probably in '64 and '65, one of the more dramatic love songs for these kids to grab hold of. I mean, they had been listening to, you know, kind of cute songs, and 'Lovin' Feelin' was just a strong, powerful song.
My voice is who I am, who I was when I was 3, and who I am going to be when I am 90 years old. When I hit the stage and people do not know who I am, they automatically assume, before I open my mouth, I am going to sing a Bob Marley song!
I suppose when you do it correctly, a good introduction and a good outro makes the song feel like it's coming out of something and then evolving into something.
'Chamalkay' is an old Guyanese slang word. It means a 'young mischievous girl.' It's not derogatory, but it isn't over complimentary, either. It was probably a word I just Googled one day, and the song kind of played into the feel of that.
You can be a rapper born and raised in go-go music, violence, drugs, crack, Reagonomics, and still, if you hear 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,' you're going to find a way to hum along. Guilty pleasures? It don't matter. Sue me - I like the song. To dance to it is another matter.
