I don't think I approach my songs differently from other artists. You get a big picture of it, and you imagine the song and hear and feel it, and that big picture is like a snapshot, and it comes to you as fast as it takes to click a camera.
I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny. And wonderful.
The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears.
I always see my songs in colors, and I'm often more inspired by movies and photographs than I am by other songs when I write my music. I'm also inspired by fashion, and I want my music to be a visual painting of what's in my mind.
I'm not doing contemporary songs unless something comes along that really knocks my socks off.
I don't even talk about being locked up in any of my songs.
I have writing songs on my own for about six years.
Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write.
I do better singing female songs because my voice is so high-pitched.
Sometimes we drop in and do an acoustic set somewhere, and that's really fun to take all these insanely loud songs, and to do them quiet. It's really a sight to see... or to hear!
Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.
I want people to come to my music without prejudice. I want them to get the music first. And who I am isn't that important. If they like the songs to me that's a good thing.
I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs.
I am happy that women can relate to my songs, and hopefully men can too.
There's a guy at the record company who's 30, and he says, I would not listen to these songs except in this context. Somehow the recording process, the arrangements, make it more accessible.
When I got into songs like 'Exist,' I was like, 'Okay, this riff has some bass sweeping in it, I'm definitely going to have to use a pick... but I guess I'll have to learn how to sweep first!'
That sense of failure, I don't know where people put it who don't write songs and aren't able to emote physically. It must go somewhere.
So I concentrated on the rhythmic side of things, and therefore left a lot of holes. I didn't want to use big pad chords everywhere. All of the songs are built up of small melodies and counter melodies all played very rhythmically.
I write songs about stuff that I can't really get past personally - and then I write a song about it and I feel better.
I'm a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker's 'You Are So Beautiful' and Eric Clapton's 'Wonderful Tonight' - songs that go straight to the point.
Just like any songwriter, I love it when people sing my songs.
I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.
You're not gonna write a hundred songs and have a hundred entirely different ideas. It's a matter of finding the ones that are the freshest and most unique.
When I was writing my autobiography, these songs came up from time to time which were important to me, and I realized that what they really represented was, they'd come from this age of shared music.
I wrote songs with the guys from Air Supply for their record... So I was just writing songs.
I like songs that are simple.
Being used to scientific terminology and theory it was always natural for me to push this stuff into songs.
Madonna did amazing songs. She had an amazing sense of style, without a stylist. And she was flawed, and sometimes she admitted it. I'll fight the fight for Madonna. I think she should send me some chocolates or something to thank me.
Learn licks and songs from records.
A lot of songs are empowering because everybody who has been through a hard time in a relationship or in their lives can relate to it.
The way to write really good songs is to write about the things that happen in your life and where you are in the moment, and writing about stuff that happens in your 30s is not the sexiest song subject.
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.
I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.
Some people come to our shows and think they're gonna spend the night just listening to love songs, and they're pretty much surprised cause we do a lot of rock and roll.
It'll be basically a live album, but it will also include songs, Judas Priest songs, the audience have never heard before, because we felt we wanted to give the kids something else, something they haven't already bought.
If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.
