Song Quotes
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'Teenage Dream' was the most difficult song I've ever been a part of. We wrote five different versions of it. We couldn't get the lyrics right. Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote most of the melody, and then Katy Perry and I were responsible for getting the lyrics right.
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I kick butt on karaoke with any Journey song!
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I think if the United States gave anything to culture at large in the 20th century, the most important contribution made was the popular song.
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I once heard someone doing a karaoke version of my song. That was pretty funny.
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I wanted to write a song not focused on looks. I realized a lot of songs, even when they are romantic, are more about how the artist feels than the person.
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I'm nosey, and I have a great imagination. So it's not necessarily things I have to go through, but it's things people I know or my family is going through, and I hear about it, and I think, 'That sounds like a great song.'
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I'm a fun song maker. I love to make people smile. I also love to see them big, burly dudes crying because their wives' song is 'Die a Happy Man.'
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I met Prince William at a musical festival and he let me know he was a fan of my music. But the invitation to sing at his wedding reception came completely out of the blue. The fact that Kate and William knew the words to my songs was very touching.
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It turns out that while I was in the hospital, the song went to number one, ... All in the same day, my transplant, the song, it was pretty intense. The guys called me on the phone and sang, 'Happy transplant to you.'
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When I started writing poetry, it was always in very hip-hop influenced spaces: Someone would teach a Nas song side-by-side with a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and we'd talk about the connections between those things.
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Actually, my first group was a folkloric group, an Argentine folkloric group when I was 10. By the time I was 11 or 12 I started writing songs in English. And then after a while of writing these songs in English it came to me that there was no reason for me to sing in English because I lived in Argentina and also there was something important [about Spanish], so I started writing in Spanish.
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I try to write about small things. Paper, animals, a house…love is kind of big. I have written a love song, though. In this film, I sing it to a lamp.
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Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.
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I just kind of go with what I am feeling and don't think I have any kind of recipe for it... I mean, that's what drew me into writing. It's fun, and sometimes you don't get a great song. Sometimes you do.
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Occasionally, you get a nice surprise when someone covers your song in an extraordinary way.
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The first song is called 'London.' It's about two Russian soldiers who desert the Russian army and escape to London, where they indulge in a life of crime.
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Well first of all, I'm a singer. I sing since I talk. So the great ballad singers, the people that sang with so much feeling, jazz, blues, all those singers, they were songs that I listened to, records that my mom played for me, and then later I bought.
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Those emotions that are really strong, the ones that inspire a song, you can hold onto that. You can let it marinate for years and keep writing about it even better than you did then.
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I really love 'Cold Song.' If anyone really listens to that song and thinks about their life, there's a lot of good material deep down in there. I think if you listen to the lyrics, it may take you on some sort of a journey.
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No matter what you do, it can't be perfect. I told Jack White, 'If I'd 'a sung that song more'n twice, it might of sounded better.' He said, 'Well, it might not of. You might have took the spark out of it.' I don't know if he has a point or not. We'll find out.
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One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' - not the abolitionist John Brown, but the one that Bob Dylan has covered and sung before. It's about a boy coming home from the Civil War, or maybe World War I even, and about his Mother seeing him all destroyed.
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There were no rules, other than that the song should sound good and be fun to play.
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My favourite piece of music is actually 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' as a whole. For me, it's the most perfect and brilliant example of rock song writing.
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I don't really break into too many solos. But I've never been a super-big solo guy anyway. I like to make the main melody guitar lines of the songs as cool and interesting as possible without just strumming chords. I like to have chords intertwined with riffs here and there, but I'll do the riffs and the solos where the bottom will drop out. Basically, I do everything for the song, I don't do it for the solo glory. Kids aren't really into that anymore for some reason.
