I think romance basically starts with respect. And new romance always starts with respect. Like the song 'Love the One You're With'; there is something to that. It's not just make love to whomever you're with, it's just love whomever you're with.
Winnowing is more like a trip to the confessional...transparent & vulnerable without being sentimental. These songs have elements that are more like prayers & pleas for faith. They're questionings and wrangling in the dark about the journey.
All I'm saying, as a fan, is I'm tired of the same song for 30 years. Can't we change the message a little? You've arrived. You have a black president. Every white guy in a commercial doesn't have to be the idiot and every black guy in a rap song doesn't have to be God's gift to the world.
It's a good time to say "Oh" and take stock and say, "Gee, how was I ethically this year?" That's the problem with faith, Joe. What it does is it kind of screws up your priorities. Your priorities shouldn't be saving your own ass, which is the focus of Christianity. The focus should be, I'm a good person, and I do that just for the sake of being good. Like the Christmas song says, "Be good for goodness' sake."
I'd like to protect children, too, but... is everything worth sacrificing to that? I mean, drugs have done a lot of good... They've midwived a lot of good ideas... lot of great songs, you know? I think "Penny Lane" is worth 10 dead kids... I think Dark Side of the Moon is worth 100 dead kids. There, I said it.
My reading was good enough to play big-band charts, but I ran into trouble with Claude (Thornhill)'s theme song "Snowfall," which had a repeating bass line in D-flat that was very difficult for me to finger using my self-taught technique. I spent one morning figuring out an alternate fingering, and that started me on the way to learning a better use of the fingerboard.
Sometimes the best songs almost write themselves
I write my own lyrics completely on my own. Sometimes I have people helping me with concepts or like choruses and stuff sometimes, but mostly I write all my own songs by myself, especially the verses and a lot of the choruses.
The beauty of having a studio is I can go in and record any time I want to, so you can always put down your ideas or whatever. You use your voice recorder and, you know, take your voice notes down and just preserve all the little jewels and gems when you're in there, putting that song together.
When I was writing the Destiny's Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn't know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.
I'll put on a song that I really like and do bicep curls with two kilo weights the whole song.
The Pink Panther is legendary, but a lot of people my age haven't ever seen the original. So, I think it's great to bring it back for my generation, and to expose them to where that theme song which still sounds so modern and that legendary image of a pink cat came from. It's great to be a part of that, because it's history.
So many people have listened to my song because of it - I'm beyond grateful. It's funny because when I met Spencer and Dustin, they were so excited to meet me, but I was like you're the celebrities to me - they're the ones with a video has over 10 million views.
I don't do filler songs. I don't get them. They don't make any sense to me. Why would I literally waste my time on a song that doesn't hold up to the same standards as the other songs on the album? I won't play it live.
My intent for EPs - and, really, my philosophy on my music - is that every single song has to be worth it.
She had heard Papa sing so many songs about the heart; the heart that was breaking - was aching - was dancing -was heavy laden - that leaped for joy - that was heavy in sorrow - that turned over - that stood still. She really believed the heart actually did those things.
We'll leave now, so that this moment will remain a perfect memory...let it be our song and think of me every time you hear it.
The song Some Other Time is full of emotion. In wartime, it had a tremendously poignant feeling.
Image is everything, and the voice or the idea or the song is hardly anything at all. Half the time the person isn't even doing the singing. I'm a bit cynical about this [music] business.
Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are doing pretty well at getting noticed - a lot of people are doing pretty well at it. But you wonder whether they'll last, because many of them don't have the ability to get an audience to love them. You say, "That's a fabulous body" or "I like that song"; you don't say, "I love them because I know them." You can't know them.
We went from being a band that was recording songs in my bandmate's bedroom to a band that's doing extensive touring and had a record on the Billboard charts and everything happened insanely fast, but it's not something that I sought out. It just happened.
There are a shitload of songs about being in love with someone who doesn't love you back and I talk about weed and my cat and being lazy a lot.
It's scary when you get to a point where you write these songs that people like, and then you think, "Am I ever going to be able to write something better than that?"
I'd rather write great songs because the word "commercial" is so subjective
Writing songs always trumps whatever else was on the schedule, it really is the most important and can be so fickle, you have to grab it when it's there.
