Song Quotes
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I want to make music three-dimensional. I want to make a song also a painting, and a painting also a culinary experience.
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You pick up loads of baggage with your first record with reaction to it from fans and critics. So I went to Ireland by myself for a couple of weeks with my guitar. I read lots of poetry, I read Patti Smith's autobiography and started words and phrases and then songs started to take shape.
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It’s amazing to have people singing a song back to you on a stage. It’s great to finish recording a song and play it for your friend, and they love it. That feels good. But nothing feels better than when you’ve finished something and you know it’s good, and you know that those other responses will come in time.
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You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting.
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Words are charms. It's like a song you didn't even know you knew.
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When I met Michael Jordan on a basketball court at an athletic club – we hooped together in Chicago – he came to me and asked me if I wanted to do a song for his upcoming movie. I was like, 'Yeah!' I didn't even ask what it was.
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I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing - strangeness and charm. It's actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit the word 'hydrogen' in there. Isn't that a nice thing for scientists to call them though?
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I've done that I was touring a couple of years ago with R. Kelly and the Lillith Fair, I would do the late night underground gigs as well because it's always around those times that there was a hot song, either on the radio or in the clubs, it would just be simultaneous.
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You hear ten seconds of a song, and you know it's OutKast. There's a strangeness about it because it's catchy, but it's not just pop for the sake of pop. They're pushing the envelope.
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I've always wanted to do a cutesy little song with a guy and girl singing back and forth and thought that Regina Spektor would be kind of cool for that. I love her voice. She's an amazing musician.
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I don't mean this in a stuck-up way, but I needed an attitude song.
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I can't constantly be trying to write the unwritten song, the song that the 15-year-old girl needs. I need to write the song that I need.
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I think 'Rather Be' is an amazingly written pop song with incredible production.
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It took a long while for me to even put out a record because there were so many options of how to do a song, and in some respects, I'm never totally happy with the outcome.
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I can't see myself ever having somebody say something about me on a song and me being like, 'All right, now I'm about to say something about them on a song.'
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That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.
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Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.
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Many people say some of their best ideas come from dreams. Arguably the greatest Beatles song, 'Yesterday,' came to Paul McCartney in a dream.
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If I write when I'm low, it will be a dark song, but I don't care. I want to be honest with myself at all times.
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Writing songs does not get any easier, and that might be because I am harder on myself than I was twenty years ago. Hopefully, as we grow older and change, there are fresh topics, new perspectives, or at least there should be.
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The song This Kiss was definitely my breakthrough song. After that, Breathe was my breakthrough album.
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I came across 'The Song of Achilles' by Madeline Miller in one of the most romantic ways one can find a story. I was digging through a pile of used books at my local library when my hand gravitated toward its brilliant teal and glistening gold cover.
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I usually work on a film soundtrack for two years, turning in a song every few months, and that keeps my creative energy high, because I'm constantly rotating projects. The trick is to make sure I don't work too hard and get exhausted.
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To me, the hook of the riff is what makes a great guitar recording. It's the backbone of the whole song. When you have a strong riff, it's the rocket fuel for the track.
