We were the rebels of the music industry so we wanted to write a rebellious song.
There is redemption in every song.
I think very often producers are really trying to repeat things. When they hear something in the new songs that they recognize as being a bit like something that was a success on a previous record, they're inclined to encourage that.
I hate the thought that someone had picked up one of my song records and was really excited about it, and walks [out of] a record shop with On Land and is disappointed because it isn't what they wanted. So, I try to make signs, graphically and visually, to say to people "Okay, this is this department of my work and this is this other department of my work." And of course I'm very pleased if people like all of them, but I don't want them to feel deceived at any point.
Songs that don't depend on composition depend instead on performance - so the fire has to be there in the playing.
I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, 'Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!'
At the party, Rob Partridge said to me, "You gave hope to other balding men." My new epitaph: "Co-wrote a couple of decent songs and went bald shamelessly."
Frequently, I go straight into the studio and see what's around. I might hire a couple of instruments that I've never used - maybe a particular type of electronic organ or an echo unit. Then I just dabble with sounds until something starts to happen that suggests a texture. The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That's like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.
Just because I said lyrics are a sign of the inability to sing doesn't mean....A) I believe that, or B) I don't think they're cool. They are cool. Words are great. I sing along with my favorite songs, but when I am drumming and singing, the words become a note that for me. In the process of playing they have more emotional impact as notes then an actual word.
I feel that music is more flexible than language and your song, or "piece" is only as flexible as your least flexible component.
Writing dialogue is like writing a song, which I've done.
There came a moment in the middle of the song when he suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room & after that he never forgot that he was part of something much bigger
I wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to travel and write songs and be a good songwriter. It came to me slowly after college.
Songs don't really feel like me unless I somehow shed a little secret or open myself somehow or be vulnerable. When I'm singing these songs, it feels like me, and that comes with the vulnerabilities and the strengths and the moments of triumph or whatever.
I can write songs, but I'm not gonna really feel good about the song unless it feels like me, and I'm not gonna release a song or put it on an album or play it in concert unless it really feels like me.
Bringing up issues that are hard to deal with is a challenge for me, and I think that's what draws me to song writing.
I sing the best when I'm really in my voice. It's kind of like I'm meditating but I sort of imagine my voice as a physical thing. I see colours, I feel it moving out of me and I try to tap into images that I was tapping into when I was writing the song.
When you get to say something in a song you're not directing it necessarily at one person. When it's in a song it's easier to get it out. I don't really worry so much about it when I'm writing a song.
I have ideas for songs all the time, but musical ideas, like melodies, really come out when I'm in nature.
I come from a place of sincerity. I write about what I see and feel. I write about what I want, I don't have a political agenda. Politics may enter into a song but it always comes from the heart.
People really respond to the songs when I play them in concert. Every song comes from a different place emotionally or from a different headspace.
Every song is completely different. Sometimes they come like a lump of clay and it's your job to chip away and find out what's in the center. Sometimes it comes like swimming fish, and you have to follow it and see where it leads. Sometimes it comes totally fragmented.
I guess it's just my job to somehow balance knowing that every song is going to come differently and be different, but also know that, on the other hand, I am a songwriter and I am a craftsman, and I do have a craft and a technique and a method. So I need to balance the technique and the method.
I want to write songs with meaning. I have high standards for my work.
For some reason I can articulate my feelings better in song. I wish it would come out better in regular life too though. The issue is that I struggle with is that I'm worried about what people think, or how they'll react to whatever it is I have to say, and obviously that's not a good thing.
