I definitely like the oddballs. There's a song called 'Little Thing,' which is the only song that I have recorded that has no words. And it's the one that I get past my critic inside me.
I use God in my songs a lot but I don't have a relationship. I don't know what that means.
My reaction to Radiohead isn't as simple as jealousy. Jealousy just burns; Radiohead infuriate me. But if it were only that, I wouldn't go back and listen to those records again and again. Listening to Radiohead makes me fell like I'm a Salieri to their Mozart. Yorke's lyrics make me want to give up. I could never in my wildest dreams find something as beautiful as they find for a single song - let alone album after album.
The reason I play music is to touch people - for selfish reasons, as well. It feels good to make someone else feel something, whether it's a kiss, a painting, good idea or it's a song.
We all love to sing, and when we sit down to write a song I think it kind of shows itself to us.
Usually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.
When I was a teenager, working towards dropping out of high school to starting to tour with bands, I'd drive around in my VW Bug every morning before school, very stoned listening over and over to Zeppelin. This song got to me because it just seemed mystical. There is something about those Celtic tunings that almost sounds Eastern. Somehow it would sweep me up into my own little trance-like state, like Sting with those shamans in the Amazon. But all I had was a bong and a Led Zeppelin cassette.
There's a reason why the Foo Fighters don't blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that's hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn't really come up, or it just hasn't felt right.
Most of our songs were written on acoustic guitar before they made it to the practice stage.
For every Foo Fighters record, we've had two or three beautiful, acoustic-based songs, but they never usually make their way to the record, because we want to make rock records.
I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them.
To me the most important thing is getting into a studio and making an album that is 12 or 14 amazing songs, getting up onstage, and making people happy by livening the rock.
I don't like people telling me what to do, or trying to MAKE me write songs.
I think one artist to another artist, the best compliment you can pay one another, because the part of you that is inspired or creates something, to write a joke or a song, that's like the God-like part of a person.
The Woodshed Orchestra trade in exuberance and might, a glistening thunderslap on the hind of musical atrophy. These songs leap from disc to lap, a many-legged beast trundling with joy and vision.
Roy Blount, who is the funniest person I know, journeys deep into the dark heart of humor and brings back a wonderfully insightful, superbly crafted song of the soul that had me laughing and crying too
I feel like my soul yearns to experience something new at all times. That may be an encounter with a new place or persons or a song that plays and urges me to dance in a different way. I come alive when there is a chance to learn or do something different.
One of my favorite albums of all time is Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Every song is superbly written, performed, and produced. He is a great loss to the music world. There will never be another one like him.
I want people to listen to the lyrics of each song and absorb the music fully before they look at me and make a judgment about what they think my music will or should sound like.
I'd like to be writing songs for other people - I just like writing songs.
I don't really have a ritual. On the car rides over to the racetrack, I just make sure that the right songs are on.
One of the things that I'm dying to do is to sing the hook on a big rap song. No one's ever called me to do that.
Just like my career, I've sung the same songs night after night in so many ways. It's always different because every space is different. I lost my mojo once. It was like Austin Powers. I don't know why or how, but I had to get it back. And I did.
Mortal City was really influenced by geography. [The song] "The Ocean" is the Pacific Northwest. Southern California and New York also figure into songs, and Iowa. "February" is very much about New England. "Mortal City" is Philadelphia. The whole album is this anthropomorphized landscape where the metaphors live in this geography.
A lot of the songs are pretty unmasked. If you listen to "As Cool As I Am," it's not all that different from what you were hearing from Ani DiFranco and some of the other indie women artists of the time. It was still in that context, still seen as folk music.
