Song Quotes
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I like to go for a certain over-the-top opulence when naming the drone pieces whereas the song titles are all about concision, I guess. I mean, if I were truly a purist, I'd call things, "Long Piece #27" or "Newest Fast Song", but I enjoy titling and it is helpful at rehearsals or when making set-lists.
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Growing up in Memphis and listening to all kinds of music and dreaming... So that was one of the first times I wrote a complete song and set it to music and the whole bit. From then on, I was busy with it.
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Me jumping on a song with Ariana Grande is just showing versatility, you know what I'm saying?
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I'd much rather be playing songs than talking to people.
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I think very frequently, musicians become a victim of every song they sing. I like all kinds of recreation. It's aggressive. I want to be part of everything.
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I worked at Johnny Rockets. For one day. I had to quit because they said that anytime a particular song comes on the jukebox, all the servers have to stop and do this special sing-along and dance, and I just knew that I wouldn't be returning.
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I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I’m not sure if that comes across or not.
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'No Matter What' is, without question, the most personal song I have ever written and the one I am most proud of.
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Duke Ellington had a song, "What Am I Here For?" - this is what being pro-life is.
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In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land.
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That song is a story that shows how easily you could get slipped into being labeled as the bad guy, even though what you really trying to do is tell the bad guy to leave you alone.
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Every time I finish a song... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head.
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The main thing for all of us was having a ballad, a slower song. Finally, they get to hear more of a vulnerable side to us! We didn't really have that in 'Reflection,' and that's something we all fought for.
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Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be?
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I try to just encompass the entire feeling and emotion behind the song the best way possible, and if that's 100,000 screaming guitars right in your face, then that's what's going down.
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Writing songs is not something I wanted to share with people for a long time. It was precious to me. I didnt want someone to crush it. I waited until I felt strong enough to take the criticism.
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Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.
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If my life were a song, what would it be? 'A Never Ending Road of Musical Good Times'.
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The video aside, 'P.D.A' is a song about when you really love somebody, you just can't resist wanting to show that out in public sometimes.
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When you write a song like 'Forrest Gump,' the subject can't be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.
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'The Taxi Ride,' from my second album, is one people want to hear a lot. I'm consciously trying to walk on the sunny side of the street, to really lift myself into a place of greater positivity, and that's a sad song.
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I'm really happy that people are starting to hear my band, and we are so happy to be conduits for all this other happiness, and this emotional response. So, I can't be like, "that doesn't matter to me, I'm an artist, I exist apart from that!" But on the other hand, if you buy into that too much, you're setting yourself up... if I start thinking, "well, people at the show really liked one song, maybe I should write more songs like that," then I'm in trouble.
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I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene-or, as they say in New York, sophisticated.
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Whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write - no matter how bad they are - get recorded.
