I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.
I tend to be the one that breaks the mold most often, and thus, I tend to be the one with a lot of outtakes, songs that don't make the record.
Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.
We haven't truly had a zeitgeisty, 'songs on the radio' show, since. . . I want to say "One Night in Bangkok" was the last musical theatre song that charted. That was so long ago.
Out of pain and problems have come the sweetest songs, the most poignant poems, the most gripping stories.
Certain songs just feel a way that's hard to put into words and it's not happy and it's also not really sad but I couldn't say what it is
I learned the songs and played the gigs, and then they called me about a month later. They told me they were like super stoked on me and asked me to join their band.
I'm always interested in hearing how other people read and react to my songs. I hadn't thought of it in just that way.
When people tell really good stories in songs, I really like it.
I guess for me what is more significant than success is the nature of each of the songs and of the words.
My songs can make you cry, take you by surprise at the same time, can make you dry your eyes with the same rhyme
My most cryptic, strange songs might be my most personal, but that isn't how people are going to receive them, because they don't know the code.
On Heartbreaker, I had to sing those songs. I drank the way I did those songs. I ate the way I did those songs. I communicated the way I did those songs
The best songs I write in 20 minutes.
Listening to my songs is like reading my diary.
The biggest thrill you can have is to tell people one of your songs, and have them be able to hum it.
Well, the problem I've had with all the interviews I've had in America - I had meetings with about nine labels - and they all say to me "Will your new songs fit in with what is popular and what is in the chart?" And I say "Good God, I hope not!
Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter.
There's a bit less elbow room and latitude to take it somewhere else, at least at festivals. In the club you can do whatever you want but at festivals, especially Ultra, nowadays the crowd wants to hear our songs.
You can imagine several scenes from Star Wars? The way they looked? For me, that's how music is. Sometimes I'll be developing riffs for songs, just while I'm sitting around and not playing.
