Song Quotes
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Cecilia was made in a living room on a Sony. It was like a little piece of magical fluff, bur it works. El Condor Pasa a Los Incas record that I love. Bridge is a very strong melodic song.
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The power of a label and radio and a booking agency and all that - you never know until you experience it the first time, but being able to have a song on radio, but then go play a show for people that have heard the song on radio, and having it sung back to you, is - I don't know how to describe it.
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I had a long distance relationship going while we were writing the album so a lot of it is about that constant struggle— you look up at the moon and wonder if that person is looking at it too. I was trying to write love songs that weren’t sappy Ben Affleck movie songs, but kind of a … man’s love songs
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A timeless pop song is the hardest thing to do as a songwriter.
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After my first No. 1 song back in 2006, I worried I may never have another one.
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Writing has never been an intentional endeavor to me. I know a lot of people have experiences and then sit down and try to sort them out through song, but whenever I sit down to write, it comes out hackneyed or overly saccharine.
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My dad and I played music. He teaches me a song or two every time I'm home.
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I don't mind Ed Sheeran, but I wouldn't want to be compared to a guy that builds his song around a guitar, since we do not have a guitar in our band.
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I've never really been nervous about any concerts. I enjoy it so much. All that matters is getting the songs played well, trying to get them to sound as close to the record live, which isn't easy, because my music is quite complicated to play.
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It's a dangerous game to write a song for a person you don't know. It feels disingenuous.
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The simpler the message, the broader the meaning, in many respects. I think about a song like Free's 'All Right Now,' which I'm often asked about. It's that sort of song.
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It's better to find a composition through an instrument and to play it and record it because you have something. It's a composition, and the song is good. It lives as a song. The worst is when you have a song and nothing is working well when you produce it. It's not like what you expect in your imagination. It's the worst because it requires a lot of work.
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Our perception of songs that we've written... the meaning changes from day to day... to whatever stage we're at in our life and careers.
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I'd like to do a song that I wrote today about our government's increasing infringement on our right to privacy, but the lyrics mysteriously disappeared from my guitar case.
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I've spent a lot of my early twenties focusing on other people as opposed to myself. Being madly in love with people and putting them first and not necessarily putting myself under a microscope. It's unsettling but I'm trying to be the kind of person that can be alone, at peace with himself. Making most recent album, I felt braver putting stuff into songs than I do bringing them up in conversation. Which makes no logical sense. Lyrically, there was a lot less hiding behind suns and moons and stars.
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I really don't do concept stuff very well. If I'm sitting thinking about what kind of song I want to write, within a few minutes, I'm kind of bored. It's just a personal thing for me.
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The thing about albums is just coming up with new material. I just got tired of that syndrome of putting out an album and then some reviewer claims that this song or that song has something to do with x y or z.
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One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' - not the abolitionist John Brown, but the one that Bob Dylan has covered and sung before. It's about a boy coming home from the Civil War, or maybe World War I even, and about his Mother seeing him all destroyed.
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I have no problem with people illegally downloading stuff. I'm not going to drive hard into 'You should buy my stuff,' because really, it's inevitable. If you like a song, you're going to download it for free. I have no problem with that.
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It's weird because when you initially write a song, you write it with no understanding that the world is maybe going to hear it one day. So when you go into the studio, you don't see the hundreds of people at a gig or the viewers on TV, you just write a song without any inhibitions or boundaries.
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God knows why - no pun intended - but every time I write a song, I feel a need to touch on religion.
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I wanted to write a song that's known to the world as a classic, stadium-rock anthem.
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For what St. Augustine said is true, that one can sing nothing worthy of God save what one has received from Him. Wherefore though we look far and wide we will find no better songs nor songs more suitable to that purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and imparted to him. Thus, singing them we may be sure that our words come from God just as if He were to sing in us for His own exaltation. Wherefore, Chrysostom exhorts men, women, and children alike to get used to singing them, so as through this act of meditation to become as one with the choir of angels.
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When I write, I don't really focus on duets or anything like that or whether I'm going to feature this or that rapper. I just focus on just making a great song and figure out the rest later.
