I'm getting bored performing the same songs over and over. Songwriting comes and goes.
I was in musicals and I was in the choir when I was younger. Before I started writing my own songs I thought I wanted to be on Broadway, but it was nothing I ever really pursued. So this was pretty out of the blue.
My mom used to ask me when I was gonna write a happy song. I still tell her that it's when I start to write really happy-sounding songs that everyone needs to start worrying.
I'm grateful to be alive, because I really did not think I was going to be alive, onstage performing songs.
As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects," which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim - I get a percentage.
I've got these five-pound weights and a treadmill in the living room. I work out the other parts that have affected my voice: my diaphragm - doctors took mine out in surgery - and my lungs. I've got to build back my legs, too, so I can run across that stage. I've got a lot to do, but I'm going to get out, sing songs and tell the stories.
She put a wedge beside my heart And then she brought the mallet down She sang no song to guide her work I lost my heart without a sound
Sting I've seen a few times, and he really inspired me in the sense that he breaks the songs down a lot and will take a different approach. He'll take an acoustic approach to them; he'll rearrange them for the live stage.
It always disappoints me when I go to a concert and they don't play my favorite song, or at least one of their biggest hits.
My passion is more in songwriting than ... in being a star.
I have my own opinions, but my songs don't share them.
Sometimes you just want to write a party song.
I didn't want to be a solo Westlife - covers and ballads - and the reason I signed with Capitol Records was because they wanted me to write songs myself. It was pretty scary, but they put me in a studio in Nashville with some new songwriters, and the results were pretty good.
Working on solo material is something I had always dreamed of doing, and I'm incredibly happy with the results. 'Everything To Me' is a very personal song to me lyrically; it is such an upbeat and optimistic record, perfect for the summer. I can't wait for people to hear it!
You know One Direction do a lot of up tempo songs, but when they did that Ed Sheeran song 'Little Things,' that was probably their biggest song off their last album, so it shows you that a ballad never goes out of fashion.
I know a lot of people connect with my story. Every night that I do shows, I get emails and texts and tweets about how my life story has helped change other people's lives. With my sobriety and what I went through. I don't do a whole bunch of songs, that from start to end talk about one particular thing. That's a missing puzzle.
Say an A&R person wants me to do this type of song because they feel it is going to work on the radio, I guarantee you that unless the song is real, there is nothing wrong with having success and I want to be successful. That is why I am, but I do it my own way.
If you ever get to a wall, you just got to break that wall down and keep going, and I feel like I have come up with some conceptual songs that will really connect with people and that is something that I have been showing and improving my lyrical ability so much that I came to this realization that I also want to make music that people can connect with.
If I am a fan of my own music, which I am, I want to hear the best Madchild I can hear. What am I missing? I sort of had a good talk with some close friends of mine that I really respect and look up to in music as well and we all just came to the conclusion, just some more storytelling songs of things I have gone through.
I am responsible for what happened to me but if I was to stay there it is kind of a constant reminder and it is very easy.... You know the new song is called Mental.... I am not trying to hide from people that I have OCD, and I don't think that I am a completely normal person.
Ireland is not at all a simple place, and in many ways it is spare and sad. It has no wealth, no power, no stability, no influence, no fashion, no size. Its only real arts are song and drama and poem. But Limerick alone has two thousand ruined castles and surely that many practicing poets.
I am not insecure enough to count the bouquets I receive on my birthday, I don't assess my popularity by the number of magazine covers I am on, I don't get worried if my song is on the seventh position on countdown charts.
People talk about Bollywood being very kitsch, and just songs and dances, and over the top and colorful.
Among the songs I love best were those that I see as historically important, which help to change and develop my taste.
You do try to write songs that you feel like people can relate to and you try to be as honest as you can so that people hear your records and they feel like, "Oh, my god. This is exactly how I feel. I went through this."
