Demos are something you do in the early stages of your career, but when you get going, you just go in and record the song.
Like many musicians, it's my roots in music, playing cover songs. I've done probably a lot more covers than the average person who does what I do, but I'm very proud of it, and I do feel like I really bring a lot artistically to these covers.
I used to go to the school folk club with my songs when I was only 13 or so and say "this is a traditional folk song" and sing it with a bad Irish accent to disguise the real source.
I bad a piano long before I bad a guitar, and the practice I got just playing those three chords in a basic 12-bar blues song was very important.
Ideally, each week, I'd like to have rad, intelligent, creative, funny guests with different takes on the world of music. I will ask them all what their favorite blink-182 song is, and what they like best about me as a person.
When people are amped up, they listen to more upbeat, loud songs. A Frank Sinatra album sets a certain mood, just as a Clash record sets another.
I grew up the biggest fan of the Cure. Knew every lyric, had every album, B-side, single, poster, everything. Then cut to fifteen years later, and we're working on songs together. Ridiculous.
We never really set out to talk about California on the album ['California'], it was something that we noticed that was happening about three-quarters of the way through the recording process. We were looking at which songs we thought would make the record and we realised that there was this theme coming through. I think it's just a product of being in California for as long as I have.
Every one of those old songs like "What's My Age Again?" and "All the Small Things" is like a tattoo or a scrapbook or an old photograph. There are just songs that define certain moments in your life. Everyone has a song that got them through a bad breakup or they put on and it made them feel like they wanted to go out and kick the world's ass with their friends on a weekend. Those songs still feel like that to me.
There was a great push and pull of what Blink-128 should sound like all the time. Travis Barker comes from a different background than I do, and Tom DeLonge comes from a different background than either of us in terms of what we write and what we think a song should be. Tom pushes me out of a box that I put myself in.
I don't think any of us felt like, "Oh, we need to put joke songs on the record." If we found something funny, we would record it, and if we wanted to, we'd put it on the record. It's not really something we spent too much time agonizing over.
I think people take Blink-128 more seriously now than they did before. And it's largely our fault because we called our records Enema of the State and Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. We were always kind of the underdogs, especially critically. People wrote us off as this joke band. But the people who listened to Blink knew that we were silly and whatever, but we wrote songs about divorce and suicide and depression. Those kids that were listening to Blink are now the ones that control all these outlets that used to just write us off.
A good river is nature's life work in song.
For the first records I really never thought about anything other than the song itself. I thought that this was what the job of a songwriter was. I was really approaching music from a very different standpoint. To me when I was younger the song was just the melody. I think as I've gotten older and have been recording myself I've become aware of just how many layers can exist within a song besides just the main vocal.
I think that female musicians are constantly fighting an uphill battle in general. Even when I'm not writing heartbreak songs... the fact that songwriting is so difficult and music criticism has become so content driven means that sometimes critics can go for the easy descriptors rather than an in-depth analysis.
I do find it easy to write songs about heartbreak; it comes really naturally to me. It was a little bit more difficult for me to break my mould and tackle different subjects. You know what it's like because you're a writer. You don't want to tread on the same territory. Writing about the personal stuff was a little difficult because I'd worry about who would read it and who would be offended by it.
When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.
I have to have music playing constantly. It creates the tone and mood for anything you are doing. I specifically love rock, and Jimi Hendrix is one of my favorite artists. My favorite song is 'Red House,' because it's heavy on the blues.
My feelings are, if you're gonna lead a rock n' roll lifestyle, don't let it affect your work. I know I can stay up all night and still come in the next day and write a song, and nothing will stop me from doing it. I expect the same from everyone else.
I realized that I started writing songs to make people feel how I felt, rather than just making them feel something. That's not the way I should do things.
I chose not to jump into the media frenzy and defend myself, though I was begged to be on every single TV show in existence. They want to blame entertainment? Isn't religion the first real entertainment? People dress up in costumes, sing songs and dedicate themselves in eternal fandom.
I know my priorities... I love music and I will continue to make songs, I know it's not just a period in my life. But I am focused on my studies.
I continue to evolve as a human, I see things differently everyday so it's sure my songs will continue to change and it's a really good thing. It's nice to listen to my music and remember why I made it.
Everyone was saved once by music. So I decided to REALLY work on my songs and not just "play" - to make something really good, more "professional." Something which makes you feel better; a song who says: "I know how much you're sad, and you're not alone, this is a song made for you." I really wanted to help with my music.
The music I'm playing now is the music I always imagined myself playing when I was a kid. It's been nice to use my instrument a bit more - play the guitar in a more fun way with riffs and stuff like that - rather than just propping up a whole song with a guitar and my vocals. There's so much more energy in the crowd as well; they've been bouncing around and having fun, and it's nice to feel like you're a part of something in a room rather than just performing for a crowd.
