Being a songwriter does not rely on an audience or other band members or a camera. I can just sit in a room and write songs.
My favorite hobby is writing and recording songs at my studio. I like to surf, but I don't get a chance to do that as much as I'd like. I don't live close to the beach. I also like to ski, but I don't get to do that much, either.
I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words.
All the signs were right. And when I mean all the sings were right, the only signs that we care about when we start a project of making a record is, do we have the songs - it's that simple.
At 13, I loved how so many of my peers sang and played acoustic guitar, so I started recording videos with covers of famous songs and posting them online.
I hold all of the songs that I have had the pleasure of recording and performing in high regard.
All my favourite pop songs are the most stupid ones, the ones that are the most obvious.
Why do they cover Paul's songs but never mine?
The Beatles mean so much to so many people, you know? Everybody has at least one song of The Beatles that's one of their favorite songs of all time.
Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us.
I love making records; I love making music; I love writing songs.
Making albums is a very lonely process sometimes. Sitting around working on songs, feeling the pressure.
Today, it's very tempting to create songs by cutting and pasting in the studio.
The thing I always default to is that I'll always be here to write songs.
I'm trying to write songs to appeal to everybody.
Original Monkees' songs were produced very thinly, on purpose.
I kind of just stumbled into producing. It was more that I was a writer, and the only way you were going to get your songs done was to do them yourself.
I like to look at the songs like they're little movies.
There's nothing I like better than talking to kids, just sharing the music with them. To relate to them, you need to play songs they're familiar with.
I'm not very good at writing songs when I have a lot of clutter in my mind.
When I sing songs, I love to put emotion into it. I want people to feel what I feel and just disappear for a moment.
I've been writing and composing songs since I was 5 years old.
My writing is really intuitive. As a kid, I went to school in New Jersey and hung out in New York, so the way kids used to talk got into our earlier songs.
I'm saying One Direction are brilliant! And I'm not kidding. Because their songs are really good.
The great songs just come out. If it comes quick, just leave it that way.
When I was singing Jamie's Cryin', people were going out of their mind because it was the first time they got to see Eddie, Michael and Alex play those songs. That was a thrill.
Maybe it is true what they say, that playing these Chuck Berry songs is easy. But try singing them. The words come out hard, like bullets.
I was left to painstakingly deal with the aftermath of my avoidance later in life, in therapy or through the lyrics of my songs.
So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.
My mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.
I love songs that have a rocking and grooving feeling.
You can't make everybody happy. We just put our head down and went forward. We said, 'This music is bigger than all of us.' That's how we felt. We said, 'You know what? We'll prevail. We'll bet on these songs.'
My expectations for myself were never high. I had a very unusual way of writing songs and of thinking about music. I wasn't at all like Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel. I was completely different - I didn't have a David Geffen at my side.
Me as an artist, I'm more notorious for writing songs that celebrate women, songs that are all about the positive element of the immensely confusing creature that is woman.
Yeah, I came in at the end of the Notorious album, played on about five tracks and then we went on a tour. Then we did another album, Big Thing, and then we started writing songs together in 1989.
Sometimes I make songs about girls, and I say 'he,' or I'll make songs about guys, and I say 'she,' or sometimes they're exactly what they're about. I feel like it just allows me to get a lot more perspective.
