I think often times if a guitar riff is centered around the chorus or if it follows the chorus, then it often times turns into the actual hook.
Any time you have a song that is directly connected to a very specific musical trend of the moment, you have immediately cut it off at the knees, doesn't matter if it goes to number one in the world, if you're too attached to a production style.
The only thing contrived is the production - you can over-produce to the point you kill a good idea, you can under-produce so that the song's amazing but you'll have folks at a radio station saying they won't play it, so there's this balance, and it has to be true.
There is maybe a cynicism because of my past as a writer.
I knew I could make money from songwriting, so how much and when was not really the question.
I wish people would spend their money on hybrid cars.
If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced.
Nobody works harder than Lady Gaga. Nobody. She is unbelievable. I don't know how she sleeps, or when or if.
I am not opposed to doing a side project, like Death Cab for Cutie, where it's completely different from my own band.
I grew up listening to English music.
I would rather put out two year-defining songs a year than flood the market with eight or nine songs.
I'm terribly forgetful. I've lost laptops, cell-phones.
When I moved to L.A., I was penniless, absolutely beyond broke and in debt up to my eyeballs.
Melody is the single most important thing to any song, period. I don't care what anybody says, it trumps everything. Not because that's my opinion but because I think it's actually indisputable fact. The human brain retains melody easier than it retains words. It's that simple.
I'm a sucker for pop melodies, things you can't get out of your head.
I live in Los Angeles, which is the second most polluted city in the world, and I wake up in the morning to dirt all over my window.
I'm in an odd position because I write across so many genres for so many people and they all influence me, and if I'm going to write as honest an album as possible, it's going to be layered.
I'm a huge Lady GaGa fan - she makes the world a more incredible place.
With iPhones, nobody has an excuse for writer's block. If you're at Whole Foods getting your green tea extract and you have a melody, you just drop it into your voice memo and save it for later.
The classic, quote/unquote, craft of songwriting still works; it still is relevant.
