I'm not so in with the prescriptive avant-garde agenda. I can do that sort of thing, but I feel that I'm still interested enough in song structure. When I look at a lyric on the page, the lyric is alive to me, looking like soldiers in a field. I can move it around, and it's very black-and-white.
The best songs I write in 20 minutes.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.
I've always said I write albums; I don't write random songs and then sort them out.
If you can't get your songs to people one way, you have to find another.
Lil Wayne is the best rapper on Earth. Can't nobody touch him. He's the only guy who can put out 300 songs a year and they all fire.
I love a lot of the young, new artists who are coming up, including Adele. I suppose anybody would freak out to work with her. To be able to play a saxophone solo on one of her songs would be the most ultimate thing ever.
How could I have kept out this incredible fiction? That's when it all started for me. I was, and still am, a HUGE Star Trek fan. "Songs Of The Ocean" is my tribute to this great story, and it's based on the Star Trek IV movie, the one in which they go back in time. [The Voyage Home ; It's the one where they bring a pair of whales to the future -ed. ]
This is pop music. You've got a candidate for president of the United States using it, that's hitting the biggest audience you're ever going to hit in your entire friggin' life. And you don't want that? Bullshit. That's what you want. It's not even for success or fortune, it's because that's the power of the song.
I would enjoy venturing into music, as I do write songs and compose music! And, of course, dance, rhythm and performance are in my blood, so eventually I see myself doing something in that area, surely!
I used to try to write a song a day. I've been so busy lately.
I like to read things I've read before. It's like listening over and over to your favorite song.
Working on solo material is something I had always dreamed of doing, and I'm incredibly happy with the results. 'Everything To Me' is a very personal song to me lyrically; it is such an upbeat and optimistic record, perfect for the summer. I can't wait for people to hear it!
I love good momentum. It makes everybody happy and in this time that we're living in, especially musically speaking, if you can make a record that has more than 4 or 5 songs deep and it has a good variety of songs. You don't frontload it with those first couple of songs. You continue the record taking the listener on a journey, musically speaking. I think you've really got something there.
I always thought the piano scene was kind of unique to shoot because we were actually able to film with the playback of the actual song. And that was quite amazing because it almost made it easier - music is usually something that is added after filming has finished so to be able to shoot a scene with music was really wonderful.
For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.
Romance isn't just about roses or killing dragons or sailing a kayak around the world. It's also about chocolate chip cookies and sharing The Grateful Dead and James Taylor with me in the middle of the night, and believing me when I say that you could be bigger than both of them put together, and not making fun of me for straightening out my french fries or pointing my shoelaces in the same direction, and letting me pout when I don't get my own way, and pretending that if I play "Flower Drum Song" one more time you won't throw me and the record out the window
I have loved music so much from when I was little and I don't know whether it was because I saw my dad doing it and then I got the idea, I don't know what came first. . . But I always had a hairbrush in the mirror singing. I was always with him backstage; I would go out and be pulled in for the last song.
I've been lucky to be able to make the records I've wanted to make. The record company has never pressured me to cut certain songs
I was very impressed with Hanson's performance. I thought that little drummer was a kick-ass drummer, and uh, that they sang great, I mean I didn't know either, y'know, that these little boys, y'know, I was very impressed. I think they'll probably be around in 20 years writing good songs, and being a great band.
