Writing is not work. In fact, theres nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.
I'd had my whole life to write my first album. I had my No. 1 and my third single out, and they go, 'Hey, guess what? We need to start recording the next one.' I'm like, 'Uh oh, I got to write another album. Well, how am I gonna write 'Should've Been a Cowboy' and 'Ain't Worth Missing' and all that again?' It took me forever to write the first one.
Writing songs and looking for ideas is like blinking my eyes. It's an involuntary muscle. I do it without thought.
My first gig, I was about 17 or 18. But I'd been singing a long time. I got a guitar when I was 8, and started trying to write songs as a teenager.
I write all year, and at the end of the year I put an album out. And if sucks, it sucks, and if it's good, it's good. I just let it lay where it lays. It doesn't stop from doing another one next year.
If I hear a conversation and somebody says something intriguing, my first thought is, Is that a song? I write all year long, and at the end of the year I pull these forty or fifty things out and say which of these things do I want to record.
