If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
The moments when I first made something, like when I first wrote a song please me so intensely. Everything else after that is just the act of communication.
Life is a song-sing it. Life is a game-play it. Life is a challenge-meet it. Life is a dream-realize it. Life is a sacrifice-offer it. Life is love-enjoy it.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let's put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don't.
When I used to write songs, especially on my own, it was just me and a guitar.
The universe corresponds to the nature of your song.
Suddenly they were dancing, holding each other tight, moving in circles that symbolised their relationship, both afraid to let go, both willing the song to continue while silently their insides tore.
I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness.
I've seen people that get onstage and sing while they have tears running down their face - I can't do that. When I cry, it starts like in my throat, so when I have something that's really emotional, sometimes if I access that too much, I can't finish the song.
I wanted to protect the songs. I wanted to make sure I could write freely and not be self-conscious about it.
Now, performing is second nature and I love every second of it. It is a very emotional thing when I can't play a song; maybe I'm hitting on something that I don't want to deal with. All of it is so personal. It is like therapy
The main thing that I've learned, artistically, is that if I'm in pain and feeling the budding of anger - if I absolutely feel like I need to write a song about it, I'll either need to transform that anger into something positive, or I'll just need to throw the song away. Because eventually, I'm going to want to transcend that pain and that anger.
I guess I don't really know any other way to do it, it just feels like the natural way to do things for me. Like - if I'm writing a song - it has to have some sort of value. Or it only has some kind of value to me, if it's something really personal. It has to mean something to me. I guess it is a little uncomfortable, or it's a little embarrassing sometimes, to know that stuff that honest is out there. But, when I hand off the thing, when it's totally done and mastered and sent, I kinda feel like it doesn't belong to me anymore.
I don't wanna forget the fact that I wanna be one of the best rappers. I feel like some of the best rappers ever - 2Pac, namely, one of them - could take sub-par beats or average beats and turn them into incredible songs.
As a person who has a pretty short attention span I think of music like that, completely. That's why I can quite happily change genres mid-song.
I think the themes in my songs are very similar from the first album to the newest one. It's all about the human condition and how we are all trying to learn to live with each other and survive love and life.
If I found out some gal was trying to steal my guy, I'd want to give her a black eye! Instead, I wrote this song. At the time I was writing each song [on this album], you could figure out the frame of mind I was in by listening closely. With every song I've ever recorded, I'm in it. I wouldn't write about it if I wasn't in it.
Saying you're a pop group isn't saying very much. Personally, when I think of pop, I think of instant, accessible, catchy songs - I definitely identify our music as that. I think that by writing pop, or instant, accessible or hopefully catchy music, it shoes you into bigger audiences because it seems that more people like that music. I think the possibilities are endless if you stick to a simplistic short song; the music can be as wild and bizarre as you want it to be, as long as at the core of it, there's something really strong.
I like to think about what the song is saying, the story of it, and conveying the mood of that to the audience. But at the same time, sharing through interacting with them and engaging them.
My first memory of loving music happened so early. We would always go to the beach in the summer and I would run from blanket to blanket, from family to family and just sing Lion King songs acapella.