Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.
And if you're horrible to me I'm going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That's how I operate.
I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song.
My first songs were about animals and shoes. I wrote one song about PF Flyers, and one to my fish.
They look for the top note to end every song. They don't know what they are singing about. There is no style.
Jay-Z called me onstage during my song that I produced for 'Watch the Throne?' That was surreal, man. One of those situations I'll never forget. I'll be able to show my kids the footage of when Jay-Z brought me onstage.
I was in a movie with Angelina Jolie called 'Life Or Something Like It' where I played her fiance, and I have a song in there.
Nashville is the business center. They forget that the bottom line of it all is still the song.
I don't find imitating other people's music easy at all. I remember being fifth in line for a Rolling Stones tour, early '90s, when Bill Wyman left, and I was hoping against hope that I wouldn't get the call to audition. I wouldn't be able to play a Stones song if you put a gun to my head.
I've been doing this career for a really long time, but there was not a lot of reason, at the time when I wrote 'Fight Song,' to believe that I should keep going.
In an age of incompetence, I've been able to last in this crazy business. I actually know how to play my ax and write a song. That's my job.
'Onward' was a song I wrote in Montreux, in Switzerland, when we were there camping out for the whole winter. In the summer, Montreux is a really, really big summertime-touristy, full-of-life kind of place. In the winter, it closes down.
I'm from the disco era where everybody thought they were John Travolta... What song is going to get me on the dance floor? Anything from 'Saturday Night Fever,' and you're up there like a demon.
I think there are some songwriters who are just brilliant who can write and then I think there are some songwriters who can like me I have a problem writing chorus lyrics but I can write a song in a story like that.
I love when a song is conceived as a jigsaw puzzle in the studio, and then it's a natural to play live. That's my gauge of success for a song.
I think recreations are a good thing if done right because it can be very dangerous also. If you do something which goes wrong, then people probably won't like it because they are attached to that old version of the song... So, recreations can be a little tricky.
I was trying to learn how to deal with the freedom that I had away from home for the first time. 'Long Black Train,' the song and the album, are very special to me. It was just one of those things that I felt like God gave to me for a purpose, and I've been out here promoting that purpose.
I try to keep the idea that there's an audience in as little space in my mind as possible, but you can't erase it entirely, the idea that when you're sitting down to write a song, people are going to hear it.
I have to strip away all the layers when I'm writing the song. I have to cut through all these layers of years of putting up walls and putting protective layers around myself.
We titled it, 'You Should Be Here,' for one, because just how special that song is, and I think it kind of sets the tone for this album. I've established that I like to have fun, but this is a little more than that - this album has got some fun stuff, but it's also got topics that I haven't gotten a chance to touch, and I'm so excited about it.
Technically, my first acting job was in one of my videos for a song called 'Retrospect For Life,' which Lauryn Hill directed and featured an actress by the name of N'bushe Wright, who played my girlfriend who was about to be pregnant. I remember being so nervous about it, but now I feel like I can conquer the world with it.
I can remember back as far as age 8, performing with the Boston Folk Song Society. It was a Woody Guthrie song.
When I write a song, the music comes from my spirit, which is very playful and optimistic, but then the lyrics come from my head, which is in a different space.
My mom used to ask me when I was gonna write a happy song. I still tell her that it's when I start to write really happy-sounding songs that everyone needs to start worrying.
Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.
Every song I write is autobiographical and is about people, and that's one of the things that gets complicated. You have to decide where's your place as a songwriter.
I was once sitting on a tube, and someone was playing my song so loudly through their ear phones next to me. I just stayed silent and chuckled to myself.
Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.
It excites me when a person puts their whole self in a song or rhyme, or instrument. It fills me.
I've really been writing a lot of country songs. I used to get criticized for doing a 'Bump & Grind,' then turning around and doing a gospel song. But the truth is I'm glad I have a gift that allows me to switch lanes.
I think the melody is the first time I hear in a song and if I like the melody, then I'll pay closer attention to the lyrics.
What I've learned is that music affects the way you feel. A song can change someone's life.
We have a history in country music of writing about the darker side of things - maybe not as much in modern times, but there's a lot of cheating and self-deprecation. We sort it out in song, in country music, as a genre.
My first song, 'Just Becuz,' was co-written by the awesome Baby Bash.
It more or less has the shape of a love song, but 'Crescent Moon' reflects more my longing for an ancient romantic context that includes wild animals, fire, danger of death, stellar navigation, and seasonal intuition.
I don't see a Spanish song being No. 1 on the Hot 100. I mean, if it happens, fantastic. But I don't think it will.
