Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.
To feel not only submitted but willing to be anything or nothing as the Lord wills it - this is, in truth, to sing a song to our Well Beloved.
I used to listen to a lot of music in my studio - all the time. But as far as the music that interplays with my work, what I've done and still do is keep a lyric book and song title. The material typically comes from Eartha Kitt, Betty Davis, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston.
I remember being at the premiere of 'Beverly Hills Cop II' and the tremendous reaction from the crowd outside, then going to a party at a hotel afterwards where the speakers were blasting 'Shakedown,' a song from the movie. That felt like a show biz moment to me.
I'll make a song with Rick Rubin, a song with Beyonce, a song with Lenny Kravitz. I just believe in making good music. I'm not trying to section myself off into just making hard-core rap music.
We've gone further on this album, where we have a Big Band song, kind of a Sinatra-type song; we have a couple songs that have electronic music on them. We've got a couple rock songs, maybe a little heavier than what we've done. So the title 'Jekyll & Hyde' really covers the breadth of the record.
I think I've been influenced by everything I've ever heard. The first thing I ever heard was my grandma, who was an opera singer. The first song I ever learned was the 'Nessun Dorma' from Puccini's 'Turandot.' My father was a big band singer, so I used to hear him walking around the house singing standards all the time.
People are People still gets played to death on '80s stations. It was our first big break in America. It's not exactly my favorite song.
When I was 16, I had a really big hit in the K-pop world. It was a hip-hop/R&B/pop song. I kinda strayed from that because of the writers I was hanging out with.
'Linger' was the first song I wrote after joining the Cranberries. I was 18, and the youngest member of the band was 16 at the time. We never imagined it'd be such a big hit.
I feel like trying to write a song in order to be a big hit is just not something I'm interested in because it's not going to come from an authentic place of expression.
Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.
In the big picture, it doesn't really matter if we never made a record, or we never sang a song. That isn't important.
I've been very hands-on with everything I've done since I had my children. And it's just really important for me to understand the big picture, where everybody's coming from, what's the real purpose of this shoot and this song, or whatever it is in that moment that I'm doing.
My mother and father come from that post-Depression, middle-of-World-War -I kind of thinking that says, 'Find a practical job. You know what I mean, Mr. Big Shot? So, you can sing a song ...'
Usually, when I'm rappin', I'm creating a big story or a concept song that sounds like a movie to me.
My version of 'Georgia' became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching.
When you use a sample in a big way, when you loop something in the way I did with 'Runaround Sue,' it's like you have your chords and your melody and the quality of the song right there before you add your own production. It's like the song is already made, in a sense.
I think, for me, one of the biggest things that I struggle with is keeping the excitement up when writing a song. A lot of times, I'll get pretty frustrated early on.
The 'Billionaire' song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It's funny.
