There's a lot of craft that goes into achieving a hit song - at the beginning of your career, you're usually more inspiration than craft, and you get great when those intersect. A skilled songwriter can get you to that intersection.
Some of the best songs that artists perform year after year are ones they hated.
Songwriters tell the truth.
I have breakups that I can credit to every song. In my twenties, I picked people who would create that dysfunction and drama, so I could draw upon it.
I spent 80% of my time working on this, and 20% of my time working on music. Why do you think the song 'Niggas in Paris' is called 'Niggas in Paris?' 'Cause niggas was in Paris!
One thing that I like to do is use words that have never actually been used in a rap song before. I also like to take words that have negative connotations and show their real meaning.
They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won't get played Huh?
There was a choice to be made, and Lena hadn't made it. The songs never lied. At least, they hadn't yet.
All of us somehow felt that the next battleground was going to be culture. We all felt somehow that our culture had been stolen from us-by commercial forces, by advertising agencies, by TV broadcasters. It felt like we were no longer singing our songs and telling stories, and generating our culture from the bottom up, but now we were somehow being spoon-fed this commercial culture top down.
I write almost every single part of my songs, even the actual drum parts sometimes, whether they be simple or layered with many different instruments.
I do write. I actually do want to start my music as well. My sister and I are starting a band. I've been playing a guitar for nine years, and she plays piano, and we sing together. We're going to start up something soon. I mostly am writing songs right now actually, but I would love to write a script someday.
I wrote my first song when I was nine, and it was called 'Notice Me'. My Mom still has the piece of paper around somewhere, but I can't even imagine how terrible it is.
I'm a really huge John Prine fan; I love his clever conversationalist songs.
I know not every song has to be a powerful message.
If I'm not writing about myself, then I sit down with people I really dig writing with and throw 'em out and see if something sticks. Their brain plus mine hopefully will make something interesting and cool and it will just snowball and we'll have a unique song by the end of it.
I do think that some of my songs, like Take a Minute, are like the train between the two worlds. It starts out with the question of "how did Gandhi ever withstand the hunger strikes and all / he didn't do it to gain power or money as I recall," and its sweep reaches all the way to this part of the world. I think maybe I'm a translator, because I lived in both worlds and truly understand them. I understand the discontent that comes from not having. But I also understand the anxiety that comes from wealth and convenience.
I wanted to write songs that would play themselves on stage, songs that sweep you through their current.
I don't feel anything about it. I really like "Staring at the Sun" - I like that song a lot. I haven't heard a lot of their records, but I know that they're cool. I know that the people who listen to them are really awesome and I like those people, so I know that I would like the band, I just don't own their records.
I won't forget those kind of things, but I just want to write them down and look at them. It's almost like when things like music come out and you're listening to a song and you have experiences with art or phenomena that supersede your simple relationship with them as just a piece of art. They're more than that. That's just what those quote are for me. They're big, they're important.
I'd have to think about it, but I was listening to this Johnny Cash song today that Tom Waits wrote for him - I think that's the story. For some reason it's a thing that sticks in my brain. He's describing this scene where he sees all these almost biblical images happening kind of in this burrow where this biblical train runs through this yard.
And it's been a process of digging through the songs and trying to make them born on stage again. I think they are very different. I think they come off very differently. I think they come off, I don't know if it's masculine or outward, extroverted than introverted. I didn't know. It's just been a process.
When you write a song about a place, you are writing a song about a place that might be in a hundred years, or a place that has been, or that was - in your imagination. I think that also embodies the American spirit. You are looking for what you can call "a place."
I love touring, I love making records, but eventually all I want...I want to score. I want people to ask me to score their film or use my songs in cinematic ways. I think the ultimate media is a story that you can watch and feel and have a musical moment to. I think it's my favorite. I love watching something when music is creating motion within the motion.
The songs started as a soundscapes, and then came the words and music; each song took at least a year to make.
Licensing is how indie rock people make a living these days, so whatever about that. But I want good films and good placement for the songs because I want to be exclusive. I don't want to just sign it away because I don't want songs to lose meaning, but I'm also...I don't care [that] Wilco sold songs to Volkswagen. That's great. They probably drive Volkswagens.
