Summertime, I think, is a collective unconscious. We all remember the notes that made up the song of the ice cream man; we all know what it feels like to brand our thighs on a playground slide that's heated up like a knife in a fire; we all have lain on our backs with our eyes closed and our hearts beating across the surface of our lids, hoping that this day will stretch just a little longer than the last one, when in fact it's all going in the other direction.
I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I’m not sure if that comes across or not.
I have writing songs on my own for about six years.
I can understand someone not liking the voice or the songs.
My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has ... coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.
Me + Love Songs on KOST=embarrassing car jam sesh.
When you write songs you're commenting on love, you're commenting on sex, relationships, whatever it is that you decide to write about it. And I've wanted to write about politics or spiritual ideas for years.
When you're singing songs about love and sex, you want everyone to think you're singing to them. Whether you're a boy, a girl, a woman, a man - whatever you're into, I can be that.
A lot of the songs I've recorded are songs I write.
To reach the highest level you have to not just have a dream and focus but you also have to make sure you are writing great songs, and if you feel they're what you want to represent you, that is key. But getting out on the road is key. And get your music out there. Maybe something catches, maybe it gets picked up and used on television, you just never know.
I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.
Now I know I understand that it was Sgt. Pepper's Band, that put the sixties into song, where have all the heroes gone?
It sounds corny, but it's absolutely true: A song chooses me. I don't go looking for a certain kind of lyric. It kind of develops its own little arc and I'll just see what happens.
Songs suffer at the mercy of the performer.
We are really in a rut with the three-minute song. You know where it's going to go. If you're trying to get your message across sometimes it's wise to say, Why don't we stop here and have a moment of silence, then go in a completely different direction?
I usually know what kind of song I'm after. I know what I'm trying to do when I start. I don't always get there. But I try to visualize what it's actually going to be.
I write songs on a universal basis. I was born out of the earth of Jamaica which I consider to be a part of Atlantis, the sunk continent, but that's my thing. But I write songs on a universal basis, not like Jamaican songs.
If I don't channel pain into a song, I play my guitar or play the piano or play my drums, or go swimming.
Sometimes I do a Dylan song and it seems to fit me so right that I figure maybe I wrote it. Dylan didn’t always do it for me as a singer, not in the early days, but then I started listening to the lyrics. That sold me.
I guess it would be if I wanted to, just lay back and predominantly write songs when I can't go on a stage anymore.
I can play the guitar and the keys and the drums. I'm not brilliant at any of them. I can sing too. Some of my friends are proper musicians but I'm a song-writer. I write songs.
There's a saying I always say, "A hit dog will holler." That means a hit record will take you wherever you want to go. I don't care if you're overweight, underweight, ugly, pretty - if you can sing an amazing song I'll sign you.
I like that cartoons are now not only animated drawings, they are a way of doing something: 'That song sounds very cartoony', or 'He has a cartoon face'. Like the word 'poetic', which usually means something different than a poem. But most of all cartoons are comforting, that's the real reason I need them.
I think we need to sort of broaden our definition of poetry, which maybe it's a good thing that they just gave this Nobel Prize to [Bob] Dylan because blurring the lines of song lyrics and also hip-hop for me is like some of the greatest uses - most innovative uses of language in my lifetime.
You truly need to witness me goo-gooing and coo-cooing and making up goofy little songs to glean a full appreciation of how nauseating I can be. This is another instance where things seemingly don't add up - how can this vile, hateful, violent, misogynist, racist, loathsome, repugnant, worthless, reprehensible subhuman be so insanely tender and kind to little doggies and kitty-cats?
