I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.
Roadrunner wanted to make Born in the Flood the next Nickelback, but I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be a huge rock star playing songs I didn't like. I didn't want to be stuck playing 'Anthem,' the song everybody liked but I didn't want to put on the record, for the next five years.
Sometimes when I have an idea, and I say, 'Okay, let's - it will be great, maybe, if I sing in English, a couple of songs.' Now, the record company and everybody's like, 'No way, you have to sing in Spanish.' And that's, you know, really good for me.
When I was 16 or 17, I started listening to Death Cab, and I started writing my own songs. I was writing alternative rock, and I had a seven-piece band. The shift was just iterations of experimentation and finding what sounded right. When I stumbled on the sound and vibe that I currently have, it was kind of by chance.
If your label won't let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!
I'm a songwriter, principally, and I was real excited that people liked my songs, but you get a bit of an ego about it.
You can tell an honest artist from one who's just given all their songs.
'Shotgun's one of the first songs I ever wrote. It's about a couple I met at Waffle House, an all night diner I used to hang at before I could go to bars.
I believe my songs are strong enough to stand on their own - even way back then when they were recorded badly and minimally.
I worry that if I enjoy something - like the songs on 'Some Nights' are about wondering about who you are. I'm never quite sure and I'd hate to feel sort of content and get a good sense of who I am because if I know one thing, that's not me. I don't mind not necessarily being happy about it. And that's fine.
I don't think I had the aspiration to be a star growing up. I loved Madonna and Bette Midler, and I had my karaoke machine and would sing their songs.
I did have a falsetto, but I only used it when I was joking around with friends or to annoy my girlfriends, or in the shower, because no one else was around. Or in college. I'd go to karaoke bars and sing Tina Turner songs in the original key.
I had between 20 and 40 songs for 'Detox,' and I just couldn't feel it. Usually, I can hear the sequence of an album as I'm going, but I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't feeling it in my gut.
I write almost everything, actually. Songs, poems, stories. And stories out of every genre, too.
I don't really like to explain my songs.
With sad music, or music that's perceived as sad, there's a sense of solidarity that can be really powerful. My songs are all joyful to me.
Remember the Y2K bug? Ahhh, those were the days... I'll never forget that New Year's Eve. My wife and I were in Golden Bay dancing with her parents to Abba songs when suddenly, the rain began to fall. I took it as a sign from Mother Nature that everything was gonna be okay. Sure enough, the clock struck 12, and life went on as normal.
When I write songs, when I sing songs, I don't have anybody in mind. I'm just trying to express what I think people are feeling.
I don't write songs that don't affect me on some level, because I figure if I am not moved by it, if its not something that I have a longing to celebrate or to be reminded of, if it doesn't affect me, then how can I possibly think it is going to affect somebody else. My touchstone is write something that matters.
I think my songs serve a purpose in a very therapeutic way to do with relationships, very different to do with my opinions on world affairs.
All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.
I'd go to the farmers' market in Santa Barbara, and I'd put out my guitar case, and I'd test out these little ditty songs that I would write, and I would get a couple of avocados, a bag of pistachios, and, like, fifteen bucks. That was a lot of money for me.
I'm very conscious of developing my singing, technically and stylistically. I want it to become more individual, express more of me. That's my goal. These songs are steps along that way.
I think I subconsciously put myself in these situations where the girlfriend isn't pleased with me. I'm useless as a boyfriend. That's how I managed to write all these songs.
Many of my fans often tell me that they listen to my songs to get through things. And therefore, obviously, I hope that they can picture being in a place where things are better... I hope my songs can bring people to a calm place.
At first, being a storyteller, it was fun to dress up and fun to sing songs and pretend to be very dramatic - all of that stuff was just fun early on.
I would type in things like, 'How to play beginner songs on guitar,' and one of the first I learnt was 'Hey, Soul Sister' by Train. I taught myself these chords I didn't know the name of and slowly started to get the hang. I was obsessed with it.
'Rhye' clearly plays with notions of sexual identity, and it has made a concerted effort to keep its own identity mysterious. Its love songs are gender-neutral, the members have declined to appear in their own videos, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a photo of the duo that doesn't cast them in shadows.
I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don't write the songs anyhow. So if you're lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you're lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this.
Almost all the producers I know and dig, like Quincy Jones or Brian Eno, are really musicians first. I'm a composer, an orchestrator, an arranger and a musician first. I know how to write and rewrite songs, and the genius is really in the rewriting.
The most important thing for me is the thing I strive for. But I also hope when I play my songs for people - adult, children, mostly children - that they feel mighty, they feel noble, they feel like warriors. And they feel like they can do anything in the world because that's how I feel.
When people come and see me, I want them to experience joy. I don't do any sad songs in my show. It's to lift the spirit.
I've always said that if you have songs on the radio and get played, you've got to have a tour to support that.
Songs seem to take me a long time. I don't know why; they're not especially excellent for taking so long.
I ended up becoming so self-conscious that my songs stopped being about my life and started being about what people thought of my music. And that was really bad.
I want to write songs people can sing along to. I can think of nothing more exciting than travelling the world and playing to audiences and having them sing your words along with you.
