I'm one of the culprits who keeps turning stuff around, shaking up original tunes and trying to stand the canon on its ear. But sometimes, you just need to sing the song.
I made my first song when I was 9 years old. Just beating on garbage cans, having people beat box.
We always try to make every song we do sound like a track. It's vocal, but we want it to be really full so no one really can even know if it's a cappella. It's not like it's missing anything, per se.
To tell you the truth, I used an Instagram filter called Ginza to share a snippet of the song - I simply left the name in the caption in case anyone wanted to use the same filter. But everyone started calling the song 'Ginza.'
Whenever I meet children's parents, they complain that the kids don't sleep until they listen to my whistle baja song! My songs have captivated the kids.
While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune.
Feminism... I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.'
'Planet Caravan' by Black Sabbath is such a delicate song from such a surprising place.
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture!
I want my careless song to strike no minor key; no fiend to stand between my body's Southern song - the fusion of the South, my body's song and me.
It wouldn't be a Carrie Underwood album without a revenge song on it. People really like when I do that. I don't mean to. I don't hate men that much. But it turns out so well!
I was carrying my friend in his casket to put him in the hearse, and I was thinking, 'I need to write a song for this guy, because he always told me I would have a No. 1 song.'
In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.
A great song is a great song, whether it's on vinyl or CD or cassette or reel to reel or mp3. Then again, that might be an overly optimistic view, but I do think that great music will transcend the medium in which it is delivered.
Just the other day I pulled out this old cassette of Ragged Glory and I popped it into my cassette player and I was digging it. They were just a great rock and roll band, one that presents the song ahead of everything else - there's no grand idea or concept behind it.
'Castles Made of Sand' was a song that my parents put me to sleep to, so naturally, it still puts me in a zen state.
I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.'
When we were doing 'Live at Benaroya,' the song 'I Will' was hard to get through. I've always get a big lump in my throat when I sing that song. And also 'Before It Breaks.' So I'm just a different songwriter now. And the older I get, the more difficult it becomes to deliver those songs casually.
Even in the beginning, when we knew there was a legal argument about how much our song sounds like his song, as one songwriter to another, I wasn't sure that Cat Stevens would take that as bad.
I don't have one song that sounds like another one in my entire catalog.
