Song Quotes
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I feel the most centered in my life when I’m performing a song.
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I usually don't share the music with the musicians until right before they have to record their parts, because I hate discussing it and just intellectualizing it on any level. I just want to speak from the subconscious, which knows way more about me than my intellectual side will ever know. Once I start doing the arrangements - what I call the architecture of the song - that has a lot of thought put into it.
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In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful.
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Whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever, you've got to be involved in it. It's got to come from the heart I think...that's what it's all about.
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I was in 'Martha Marcy May Marlene,' and I got to do a song for the soundtrack.
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I don't want to scream 'Immigrant Song' every night for the rest of my life, and I'm not sure I could.
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I never was a liner note junkie. I didn't know who produced records or there was such a thing as a straight songwriter. I always assumed that everybody that was singing a song wrote it or made it up.
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Well, I Am... I Said was a very difficult song, very difficult because I really had to spend a lot of time thinking about what I was before the song was written.
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Right around my first year of college - I remember "Song of Solomon," by Toni Morrison, just moved me tremendously. The power of language and how it can peel back truths, bring things to the surface. So I learned a lot from fiction.
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The thing is, unfortunately, I write the best songs when I'm miserable.
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I can picture guys sitting out in their yard, working in their yard, bending over to plant some trees or something, and half their crack shows, ... I mean, that's kind of one of the things that drew me into the song. The song talks about things that I grew up experiencing.
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When I was asked to do a song from 'In the Heights' at the White House in 2009, I chose instead to do 'Alexander Hamilton' because I felt like I was meeting a moment.
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It's like freedom of speech - they can't tell you not to do it. When no one will put you on at a club or venue, you can go to the street, just start singing, and get a lot of good feedback from people as they walk by. I got really good at lip reading and seeing if a song is working. It was a good way to start.
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I tell people all the time - I'm a very spiritual person, so I pray over everything that I do including creating music, a new song.
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Songs always get better after you start playing them live.
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I stepped back from being out front to playing bass. So we started switching: I'd play bass on one song, we'd switch on the next song; I'd play piano... we'd play mandolin.
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If you go back to 'Pretty Fly,' it was a very popish song, but there was a satirical side to it, and I think that's cool. I like the idea that it's making people think just a little bit.
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Right now I feel so inspired, it's hard to believe. I've written about 20 songs in the last two days. I'd gone about four months without writing a thing.
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I think the process of 'I Love It' becoming such a big song opened my eyes to sides of the industry that I'd never been aware of, which I wasn't so into.
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My song are more about the practical message of not wearing ourselves out just to get rich and looking at what life is really about and enjoying each and every day as opposed to the opposite of that. About living your life in a freer sense and not being bound by what people think of you and looking forward to seeing the grander scheme of who God is, what He's done and what He's doing and what He'd going to do.
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If a slave were to raise his voice to his master, he risked all manner of punishment. Yet what was possible in many circumstances was to lift one's voice in song. This was a major ingredient in what is now known as blues and gospel. Slaves may have been regarded as subhuman by their cruel captors, but through music, they were proud and dignified.
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I think that selling rights is a bad move commercially, not just morally. It cheapens the songs. When people come to my concerts, they often hold up candles when we do "Let It Be." I don't think they'd do that anymore if the song suddenly became part of an Oldsmobile ad.
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There are producers that have been my friends for many years that I'm still a big fan of, from Boyz Noize to solo acts. Justice. It really varies. All the way to like...sometimes I'll just find some dude out of Chicago that makes a great house song. I'm feeling a lot of the deep house stuff, Jamie Jones.
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My parents called me the WB frog. Because when I was onstage, I would do this whole song and dance, but if my parents had a family friend over, I would just go hide in the bedroom.
