I love to sing, and I've recorded a few covers and originals with friends, but I haven't written any songs.
That's my goal, is to stay in a truthful place. And sometimes that means writing a silly song, or singing about sex or singing about environmental destruction or heartbreak, or my grandmother. The subject isn't what the core is about, it's about truthfulness and authenticity and that just comes from my heart and soul.
I don't feel like I have a lot of reference to sexual innuendo on my songs.
Writing a song is almost like cheating-writing because you don't have to finish your sentences, you don't have to use any punctuation, no one's going to edit your work. It's so wide open. People just grunt and that's a song. You can kind of do anything.
I do experience something pretty commonly with every song; there's some moment where it clicks into its own life with its own emotional impact that I feel, and even though technically I'm the one writing the song, it's like watching a storm come in.
I think some modesty actually serves me by just accepting that I am an instrument. I'm not trying to match up to an ideal as some kind of challenge. It's more like I use the family tree of music and song that I feel has fit me as an encouragement; like it's a bed to rest in rather than a challenge to try to better myself over, to try to.
I do notice that my songs fit all over the map, even in terms of the colloquialisms in them. The songs come out with their references intact, almost unheeded by me. It's like they existed somehow before they met me with their relationship to the tradition, and then they just end up coming through me at that moment because of my relationship to some certain kind of music that I've listened to in my life. I know that sounds a little bit woooey.
I'm a terrible sentence finisher. I think that's why I'm a songwriter. When you write a song, there are no rules, and I think that I talk as if there are no rules. But then I run this great risk of no one understanding me at all.
There is a very palpable difference for me between some of my earlier songs and where my later work has gone. If I were making my dream set list for tonight's show, I'm probably not going to include a whole bunch of stuff from the album that I made when I was 23.
I think that I have come at it backwards in a way because a lot of what I'm doing as a songwriter is not incredibly intentional. There's a moment that happens which creates the song or the actual idea for a song, and then I'm like, "Oh, it's this kind of song."
Sarah turned her narrow-eyed gaze on him, making me glad once more that Antimony's comic books got it wrong, and telepaths can't actually kill you with their brains. Give you a whopping headache and earworm you with annoying jingles, yes; kill you, no. (Although sometimes, when she's managed to stick "The Happy Banana Song" in my head for a week, I sort of wish she could kill people with her brain. It would be kinder.)
I would point to a song like 'I'm Not A Loser', which I tried to evolve as best I could over the years. But finally after years of trying to evolve it into something a little more, up to date I guess, we just don't play it anymore.
It doesn't matter what kind of music you like or what kind of person you are or what you're used to listening to, or whether you know me or not. It doesn't matter, either way you can be inspired by it [my songs]. Each way I want to make it relatable to that group, but most of all keep the inspirational part of it, for sure."
When you write or sing a song that means something to you, you are saying, 'You know what? This is who I am!'
Some of the fanmail is interesting! Some of it's the lyrics to the songs and stuff, and they'll like, send me their favourite lines, which is cool to...know what people are liking. Most of them are really cool to read.
I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.
It's hard to imagine that our love is a story with an end. But you know, at least I'm getting some really good songs out of it
Everybody needs inspiration Everbody needs a song. A beautiful melody, When the night's so long. Cause there is no guarantee, That this life is easy.
My guitar is like my best friend. My guitar can get me through anything. If I can sit down and write an amazing song with my guitar about what's going on in life, then that's the greatest therapy for me.
First play I ever did was 'Footloose.' I played the part of Willard when I was 16. I think I wore my drama teacher's jeans and her belt - that's how small I was. I know a lot of Willard's back story from the musical that's not explored in the film. Like he's got this whole relationship with his mama, and he sings this song "Mama Says".
Your testimony doesn't mean anything if it is not your testimony. So every song that I write it happened at one point in my life or another.
I've been walking to school and trying to figure out what's going on there; some of the production and songs are so ridiculous. I want to get inside that.
People who understand Doom don't blink an eye at song lengths.
I really got into psych because everything has a really good groove to it and it's nicely spaced out, but ultimately they are just cool pop songs with a little something else that makes them special and unique. They are interesting and have another dimension to them besides a three chord change.
Europe is weird songs that would never make it in America.
