Song Quotes
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I am interested in politics but have stayed away from writing overtly political songs, or message songs, because I find it difficult to discuss politics intelligently in a 4-minute song. But I am finding there are ways to get bits and pieces of political thought across without preaching that the people have the power or we shall not be moved. Of course these sentiments have their place too - I'm not knocking Phil Ochs - but that's a different kind of music, songs to play at rallies, not to achieve a state of bliss.
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When I'm picking songs for an album I always want a song that I can relate to and that I have experienced. There's nothing worse than watching an artist try and sell a song that isn't believable coming from them.
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'Hold On' is such an important song to me personally.
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I really felt like 'Chandelier' was a big pop song. But we weren't sure what would happen if I wasn't willing to show my face and do promo and go on tour and do the traditional kind of pop strategy. So I had no expectations.
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I've reinvented myself every year since 1998, and my style's still changing. It's grittier now. I always gotta try something new. I've grown up. Then I was rapping; now I do music, I write albums. But my distinctive voice and style, people still can't catch it. They're still asking me, "What were you saying on that song?".
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Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.
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I'll try not to let a day go by without making a song. I don't think I've created a lot of music.
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I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song.
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I'm trying to use people like Meredith Monk and Philip Glass and Terry Riley as the backing tracks for new pop songs. It's really hard trying to use the format and write a pop song on top of avant-garde music, so we'll see. It could be cool, or it could totally flop.
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Obviously, writing together is very intimate because it's sort of acting where you need to get to a really deep place to get the most emotional song.
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A Grammy is a wonderful thing; all of a sudden you're given a new audience but, like anything, you have to be able to grow with these songs if you really want a long artistic career.
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I have a card catalogue in my brain of every lyric of every sappy love song ever written.
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Performing with Thomas Rhett our song 'Craving You,' I'm so excited for the fans to see it and sort of see our worlds come together because I feel like he's sort of a genre pusher and boundary pusher, and I feel the same way about my music.
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The last thing we would want is for our fans to feel that we're trying to find the 17th opportunity to sell them the same song.
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Em reminds me of one of my friends from back home. It was just so natural. I forgot in two seconds that he was the biggest-selling artist of the decade. He knows what he’s doing. Me and him mixed the song together and he’s not like somebody that’s telling somebody what to do. We were both on the board turning knobs. The atmosphere and the vibe down there was just super cool.
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That's the beauty of song writing. You never know when inspiration will come or how it will hit, you just gotta kinda grasp a hold of it and make sense of it somehow.
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I couldn't write a political song. There's just opinion; it's all arbitrary anyway. It's all subjective.
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The most important ingredient to making a song work is the magic. You've got a melody, you've got words, but on the more successful songs, there's a sort of magic glow that just happens and you can feel it happening. It just makes the songs sort of roll out.
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With every song that I write, I compare it to the Beatles. The thing is, they only got there before me. If I'd been born at the same time as John Lennon, I'd have been up there.
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Some of the press who speak loudly about the freedom of the press are themselves the enemies of freedom. Countless people dare not say a thing because they know it will be picked up and made a song of by the press. That limits freedom.
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I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon. Part of the reason I work on stuff for so long is just because I love working on it. It's not that I'm haunted by some ghost sound. I just have nothing else to do with my life. Some people like to obsessively shop online. I like to obsessively rack up studio bills.
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No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose. For me, it's always about melody - it doesn't matter what genre of music you're writing, if there's a strong melodic thing somewhere, whether that's in a vocal or in a guitar part or a sample. Something that sticks in your brain, that seems to be something that works.
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What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?
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At this point, I have 10 pairs of cat earrings because fans bring them to me. The next song I write, I'm going to be like, 'I love Chanel.'
