I like singer-songwriters, and I find sad songs comforting rather than depressing. It makes you realise you're not alone in the world.
People say I look younger than the music I'm doing just because the songs are older. Hopefully I can keep my youthful look!
My record company had to beg me to stop filmin' music videos in the projects. No matter what the song was about, I had 'em out there.
I'd always put on little shows at home, but when I was 11, I did a community event in Woodford, where anyone could go. You had three days of vocal training and performed your song at the end. I sang 'I Say a Little Prayer.' It's a tough song to sing but they gave me the confidence to go for it and belt it out.
By all means write new songs. Each generation must do that. But to neglect the church's original hymnbook is, to put it bluntly, crazy
And finally, I just felt it was crucial for some of us in the hip hop community to speak up on the issues of teen suicide, bullying, and the overall anti-homosexual sentiment that exist within hip hop culture. I felt so strongly about these issues and this song that I had to do a video that would command some attention, even if it makes some viewers uncomfortable.
I'm happy whenever anybody does my material. I don't care what they do with it. I do what I want to with other people's songs.
I'm like a bad musical cliche because I bring my guitar on the road and try to write songs in hotel rooms.
With the 'iCarly' soundtrack, I didn't get to write any of the songs. I just picked songs that meant a lot to me that I really liked.
As long as bands are still out there slaving away in the garage and putting out their own records and just pushing the envelope for how songs should be written or how they should be played, punk will never die.
Those minutes that I'm on stage are the best! Being there and looking at the crowd and seeing their faces, hearing them sing the positive words from the songs.
When I hire musicians, I look for that first: every time they sit down do they go for it, you know? And do they try to learn the music and try to get inside the song whatever the tune is? Whether it's my originals or someone else's, it's just whether or not they're gonna play their hearts out, first and foremost.
As a songwriter, your songs are, in a way, like your children - you want them to be appreciated.
Sometimes I think that no situation actually fits the technical definition of irony, and that the word just sort of hangs out in the linguistic ether singing a Siren song that's designed to crash the unsuspecting against the jagged rocks of pedantry.
I love our country. My dad served in the army. I always grew up with a song sense of belonging as an American. But I was also in the counterculture and I was coming from a place of fearing the police. So I was anti-establishment, but also loving your country. It's kind of an ironic sort of upbringing.
I write songs to turn myself into something else. And then I become that, and I want to become something else.
Grace Kelly was written after these musicians were trying to mold me into what I should be. I was really angry and so I wrote the song and mailed them the lyrics. They didn't call me back, but two years later it's come full circle.
I enjoy creating all types of music and I take inspiration from everything around me. Its not about trends or what’s fashionably popular, its about creative expression, quality, emotion and artistic integrity. I love and listen to all styles of music and try to blend the influences together into my songs. Including elements of funk, soul, dub, disco, ‘80s sounds and rock
It's funny, when I'm not on the road or doing stuff with Bad Company - or whatever- I've always written songs galore... a lot of stuff people don't even hear.
Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.
I came into the music world in 1988 with a song called Ooh La La, that was like a breath of fresh air in Haitian music.
I was in a karaoke video in 1991, for a song called 'Sukiyaki,' which is a very famous Japanese song, and I've actually heard from people that they've been in bars in Asia where they've seen me come up in the 'Sukiyaki' video that they play behind you. I'm in that. I'm in a karaoke video.
When I was a teenager, my dad used to call me 'Hollywood' because I wore sunglasses all the time, even at night. Cue song.
The song "Sing for the Submarine" presents my dream world, which is way different from my waking world. It's set in the future and it's post-apocalyptic.
I'm just trying to unite the western crowd and the bluegrass crowd a little more. ... I get to do that again on my new album, Tall Grass and Cool Water.... This is the first time I've had every song on an album be a Bluegrass and Cowboy Song at the same time.
