It's a natural tendency of mine to not even listen to lyrics.
People have no discrepancy for me or my lyrics or the song.
There were times in my career I went a little further than I wanted because of expectations. Doing certain things onstage when children were in the audience, wearing certain clothes, singing certain lyrics.
I'm obsessed with the science of music. I'm obsessed with the way you can string notes together and they can do something, and you play the same notes in another way and they do nothing. How the essence within songs - within words, within lyrics - finds its place.
I always thought it was important for my lyrics to come from a really honest place.
After 911, we realized that all these silly culture wars, and arguing about rock lyrics. . . who cares? You know, we, for some reason, remembered what our real problems are.
Finally I started really opening up as a songwriter and an interpreter and taking songs from all kind of genres and stripping them down to just lyrics and the story inside the lyrics, and trying to make them really mine.
Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction. . . All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland. . . I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around. . . Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.
Quite often, lyrics get misunderstood - and I never mind that. I guess what all artists want is for their work to touch someone or for it to bethought provoking.
I write lyrics everyday as I go. I'm always taking notes in my phone whenever I am inspired by something. Most of my writing starts out as poetry before I put it into songs.
Here's the thing with lyrics: Words are just another musical instrument.
A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seedword is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but and if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb. Good poems, therefore, are always close to banality, over which, however, they tower like precipices.
I create my own lyrics. I have a great band. I have a drummer from East Berlin.
The younger people get into the lyrics in a different way; there's much more of a tactile understanding, which is the way I prefer it.
I told Bernie Taupin that his best lyrics were for Song For Guy just because it doesn't have any words in it. But there you go. . . I'm a wind up! But a good Elton song for karaoke is I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues. . . "laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder under the covers. . . " Everyone can join in!
When you go through tragedy, you can either let that destroy you and you become bitter and never let it go, or you can let it make you stronger and let it make you grow. And that's what I did. My lyrics are coming from a place that I want people to relate to and feel that they're not alone.
Whether it's a letter, song lyrics, part of a novel, or instructions on how to fix a kitchen sink, it's writing. You keep your craft honed, you acquire the discipline to finish things. You turn into a self-taskmaster.
I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.
My lyrics are a big pile of contradictions.
I've tended to write lyrics alone. The emotion of the melody comes first. But what stimulates us are usually these dreamy minor chords. We all feel we're an emotional band as far as writing, but the specific emotions tend to be of a melancholic, or of an almost sinister-yet-beautiful nature. I never think of our songs as being about boy-girl relationships or ultra-female. The music comes from a universal place.