Song Quotes
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If I get a song - a good song - I just sing it the way I hear it in my head. If anybody else wanted to add whistles and bells and chains rattling, that's fine. Just not too much. I actually just do things as straight ahead as possible.
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If a musician wants to be an actor, everyone thinks that's pretty cool. But if an actor wants to play a song, even if they've been doing it for 40 years, that's bad news.
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Inspiration is enough to give expression to the tone in singing, especially when the song is without words.
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'Whiplash' was always the song I hated the most because it's a song designed to screw with drummers.
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Sometimes, if a song is written, in essence, to be that stripped down, it's very touchy when you start adding things, because even the smallest thing can have a huge impact. Somebody has to make the decision that there's a better song in there if there's less.
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I fell in love with folk music at Surprise Lake Camp. It was the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Weavers.
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I'm not the same person as the character I do in my songs. She's crazy! The 'Daddy Song' was the first sketch I ever wrote, especially on the guitar and everything - and definitely the most offensive. And absurd.
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I wrote a song with a guy named Brian McKnight, who's a huge R&B guy.
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I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it.
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The same song on a different day was a different song.
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I take chances. I don't limit myself. I don't think anybody who listens to Boston would have predicted hearing a female rapper on the beginning of the song 'Sail Away.' But that's what fit.
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My opinion is that music is music. As long as you approach doing a remix with truth, I don't see the dance remixes being any different than an hip-hop remix- it's really a different version of the song.
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I source images and ideas from different parts of my experiences, and sometimes they are things that are made-up, or just appear out of nowhere, like out of a dream or an image that I've seen in a book, or even the title of a book that I'm staring at on a shelf. It's a good way to write songs, just stare at a bookshelf!
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If I'm on a bus and someone makes my blood boil, I'll pocket those emotions and put them in a song.
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I'm not that type of musician where I can sit down at the piano and work out a song; I actually really enjoy that process of sitting with somebody and having nothing and then suddenly something starts appearing. You struggle with it, and then suddenly a song starts to appear. Then, you've got to try and muscle it - there's that word again - into something and you do. You tussle with it and play with it and roll around with it and suddenly, magically, something appears.
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That's actually about my dad's ex-wife believe it or not!. Actually a lot of the stuff that's in that song actually happened, like my laundry being thrown out, and stuff like that. So that was inspired by my dad's ex-wife.
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I think there's just so many people in the world that don't feel understood, and when you hear a song and you go, 'Oh, that song understands me,' that's an amazing feeling. I get it when I listen to the radio... That's a beautiful part of music.
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I'm still proud of what I've done, even if it hasn't been the biggest song on the radio or hasn't gone to number one.
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I stand firm behind the belief that, for me, songwriting isn't something that I do or command, it happens to me. I can either choose to stop and acknowledge it, or put it off and hope that it won't fade away. 'That Wasn't Me' is no exception - it came together more quickly than any other song I have ever constructed on my own.
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I see a steady downward slope toward oblivion over the next three years. I'm pessimistic. Everything that's happened to me so far has been kind of flukey. I went into Twentieth Century because I wanted to work for Hal Prince. The part was too small according to my agent. I had been doing only leading parts, and he thought I should continue that. But the part was enlarged in rehearsal: songs were added, and it became more physicalized and showy. Then I won awards and got attention.
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You know when a song has a melody or some kind of element that affects you, and that is what I am trying to go for.
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To be fair, I did come out of nowhere. 'Ghost' was the first song I ever did in a studio, my first time ever cutting a professional vocal.
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When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.
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The writing process for us is different with every song. Sometimes they come from our lives, or someone else we know may be going through something that we choose to write about.
