What Joanna and Solange and Kanye all had in common was a mental image of what the sound is supposed to be. As a collaborator, my goal has to be to help them get toward that mental image. That was cool.
The people I really admire, like William Blake and John Coltrane and Richard Wagner, had these ridiculously full universes that took their entire lives to describe.
When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.
Steely Dan is a band I'm not that into. Well, I guess I like certain singles.
I wasn't into chimpanzees or gorillas because I kinda felt like they were the Coke and Pepsi of the primate world.
The more songs I've written, the more I've grown interested in telling a story. When I first began, I had this list of opaque phrases where you can make of it what you want.
