Song Quotes
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I don't ever try to make a song better than my last song. I just try to make it different from my last one.
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I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad.
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I think I hid my singing talent from a lot of my friends at school because I didn't want to alienate anyone. If everyone was singing along in the car to a Madonna song, I didn't join in because when we're younger we're afraid of sticking out or showing off, when in fact we should own those things that make us really unique.
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As a member of Guess Who, I think 'No Time' was the best thing we ever did. It was a pivotal song in our career.
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The emotion of a song's lyrics has always been what grabs me deeply.
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Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
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I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.
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I remember the first single I ever bought. I think it was a terrible song called 'D.I.S.C.O.' by a band called Ottawan. It's a really fearless disco track from the '70s or early '80s.
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I'm a big fan of simplicity, especially with songs and I try not to make them complicated. I just make them simple and let people absorb that message themselves. That's my theory.
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There's a lot of people I'd love to work with at some point, but I think the song has to be the right thing. It has to be the right fit.
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I've always felt that to deliver a song successfully, you have to be an actress. A good actress becomes the part, just as a good singer becomes the song.
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The song 'Innocent' is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.
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Through my years as a writer, I've learnt how to simplify the message and pen songs that have a more specific quality - it's not just about my ego and trying to meet girls.
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I've been doing this career for a really long time, but there was not a lot of reason, at the time when I wrote 'Fight Song,' to believe that I should keep going.
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Sometimes, I'm driving along in my car, and a song from my high-school years comes on the radio: Springsteen's 'Thunder Road.' Just the opening few chords make me want to roll down the window and let the wind blow back my hair.
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Rather than writing about my experiences with other people, 'Ugly Cherries' is the first song I've ever written about myself. It's a confrontation: an attempt to unpack my own queerness with humor and self care.
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When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.'
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I don't think a song should be put in a category.
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I've always been one of those people that, if I am angry, I just hold it in. And I always kind of, like, wrote it in a song and put it aside for myself because it helps me get it out. It's almost like exercising; it's almost like that for me.
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I like to come up with lots of different sounds. So the final version of a song might have been 10 completely different songs before we finally got it right.
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Why I got into music was James Taylor, so to see him be a real down-to-earth guy that's unbelievably talented... then to hear him sing those lyrics of 'What I'm Thankful For,' which is a song Ms. Yearwood and I got to write together, that was definitely a highlight of my recording life.
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If I do a song where I'm angry, when it's time to perform it live I'm not mad, I'm happy. I'm at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That's acting.
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Since I met Starsmith, my producer, I really feel like I'm making music because we write it together and produce it together. I've got a proper involvement in the end product as opposed to just writing a song and finding someone else to produce it.
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That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'
