I can't stand to hear my own voice. If one of my songs comes on in a café, I'll run out right away and come back with the police.
Now I'm not going to go, "Oh my God, what are people saying about me?" I had a choice to be a student and not become a model, and becoming a doctor was another one of my dreams. I had a choice between not becoming a singer or becoming a songwriter and writing behind the scenes; nobody would have seen me writing songs for other people. I had the choice of not marrying my man; we could have just been hidden lovers, but I couldn't cope with it. I had these choices to do all these things, so I'm not going to cry over a life which has been really lucky.
One whispered yes becomes the wind song over an ocean of no's.
Often people will ask me why a song was chosen and I don't always have a good answer for it. You try ideas and something works or sounds really cool. Sometimes songs are on the nose and sometimes they're more mysterious.
But some nights, I must tell you, I go down there after everyone has fallen asleep. I swim back and forth in the echoing blackness. I sing a love song as well as I can, lost for a while in the home of the rain.
Come with me, the river said, close your eyes and quiet your limbs and float with me into the wonder and mystery of the canyons, see the unknown and the little known, look upon the stone gods face to face, see Medusa, drink my waters, hear my song, feel my power, come along and drift with me toward the distant, ultimate and legendary sea.
I like the process of writing songs. It makes me feel good.
I write songs about fat girls and about men who run off to Mexico.
What happened was I was a songwriter on Quincy Jones' publishing company, Qwest, for two and a half years before I gave him the song for Michael Jackson. He had a meeting with the songwriters. I think there were about six of us on the West Coast and we all had a meeting at his house where he sort of gave us an outline of what he wanted. To finish this BAD album Jones needed one more song to round out the album. I took notes and then I then took my notes to my writing partner Glen Ballard.
If I could be a doctor and save lives I would, but I can't so I sing songs.
If my life were a song it would be called 'Don't Stop Believing'. Yeah.
I wanted to do a summary of my life and career. There’s been so many different looks, and so many types of songs that have become iconic, so it was just kind of fun to look back on everything
Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes.
My artistic goal was to write something that's one hundred percent real and true to me and to this world. I tried to touch on truths that really connect with people from every avenue of life. Ultimately, when you write from a vantage point of faith, humility and openness to the world around you, people have to respond because those same truths are instilled in them. Honestly, I don't have any agenda other than being sincere, real, and passionate about these songs and the music I make.
Although I'm a huge fan of Ben Kweller, I don't think I'd cover one of his songs, simply because there's just so much of my own stuff I wanna do.
I write the songs, go in and record them, then I listen to everything and decide how it all fits together.
I feel guilty because I want to act more than I want to write songs. I'm a person who likes to transition; I like to grow.
Surely common sense as well as anthropological evidence documents the universal need to pray, to hope, and to lament or carouse through song.
The first music I was ever exposed to was Irish folk music, like the Clancy Brothers. My father plays that and Christmas songs.
We all know how funny Morrissey is. Actually, you know what? I say that sarcastically. His songs are some of the funniest songs I've ever heard in my life. I mean, really. I mean, not that the "Girlfriend in a Coma" is, like, really funny.