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My first album was hip-hop influenced, and my second was more of a singer-songwriter album.
Mat Kearney -
I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.
Mat Kearney
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I had the lyric 'Chip Don't Go' and a few words, and my wife came in and said that it sounded like a good song. I thought I'd finish writing it up and posting it to YouTube. I didn't realize it was going to take off like it did.
Mat Kearney -
When 'Young Love' came out, I was really excited, and it has been really special.
Mat Kearney -
Golf was big in my family.
Mat Kearney -
I enjoy changing; I think it's more fun to try something different than to just do what you did last time. As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new, and keep it exciting.
Mat Kearney -
It's a job, and it's challenging. But I love music and creating. That's why I got into music.
Mat Kearney -
I started as a writer. I didn't play music until late in life.
Mat Kearney
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For my father, he didn't know what 'Grey's Anatomy' was. He didn't know who John Mayer was. But when I showed up on the 'Law & Order' TNT promo spot, he thought, 'Wow, my son has made it.'
Mat Kearney -
I can't help but do things my own way.
Mat Kearney -
The first year I moved to Nashville, I started playing these songwriter nights with people like Nickel Creek, Duncan Sheik, and even Ryan Adams... That was the first place I really started playing music, and I had to really step up my game. Really quick. Or get kicked off the stage.
Mat Kearney -
You write these songs which are really dear to you about your family or friends, loved ones, and then you get this call, and they say, 'It's perfect for two vampires making out in the back of a car.' It's some random TV show, and so I say, 'Oh, yeah, perfect - that's what I meant it for.'
Mat Kearney -
I read about two reviews early on when my first record came out, and it just freaked me out, good and bad, so I've never really kept up with that side of it.
Mat Kearney -
When I barely got into college, the one thing I could do was write, so I became an English major.
Mat Kearney
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I don't know how much I'm connected to the hip-hop scene, but I definitely lend from that urgency.
Mat Kearney -
When I first started writing music, it was to express that. I was trying to find God and trying to find meaning in my life. That's what my music was about. It wasn't to entertain.
Mat Kearney -
I thought my second record was good, but it didn't have that smash hit we did on the first one that somehow found its way onto tons of formats of radio stations.
Mat Kearney -
I've had moments in my career when I've made more money and had more success than at other times, but I've realized being happy has very little to do with any of that.
Mat Kearney -
There's something incredibly vulnerable about middle school for me. We're really impressionable during that period. The cement's still wet, so to speak, and a lot of things later in life are born during that season.
Mat Kearney -
I was an English major in college, so I really liked spoken word and poetry; it was what I did before I wrote music.
Mat Kearney
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When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.
Mat Kearney -
I think, in a lot of ways, hip-hop is interesting to me because it's like the modern-day folk music.
Mat Kearney -
I grew up in Oregon, so there was always a lot of that folksy, Bob Marley stuff. There was a mural of Bob Marley on a wall at my high school.
Mat Kearney -
When I set out to write, I want to write something that will rip your heart out and connect with you. Great songs connect beyond genre and style.
Mat Kearney