Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it.
'Creeping Death' - that was a special song for me as a kid, because that was the one that every single Jewish kid thought, 'Oh, Metallica wrote a song for us. He wrote it about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt under slavery.'
When I was playing piano, it was like, 'I'm going to write a song using all the white keys.' My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good.
I have this lust for the so-called South Seas. I would like to explore every corner of the Pacific. You know the song: 'To everything turn, turn, turn, there is a season.' It's just time.
I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.
When we're falling in love or out of it, that's when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I'm very happy to do that.
But when I hear a great song, I can't help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.
We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism.
I always ask any of the artists that open up if they know 'Family Tradition', since that's my last song in the set, and if they do, I normally ask them to come on out and take a verse and have fun. When that song is done, I am gone.
To me, 'Blackberry Way' stands up as a song that could be sung in any era, really. We do it with the new doing all sort of fanfare things in it and it works really well. It goes down great with audiences.
'Faucet Failure' was my favorite because I just had fun with it, and it was just 10 minutes, and I didn't overthink anything, and I wanted to just have fun with the song.
Nobody's favorite movie is some dark, dysfunctional slasher story. Everybody's favorite song is a sentimental song. So why all of a sudden is it bad to be sentimental in books?
When I was a boy, one of my favorite places to go was a pine-filled hollow high on the mountain behind our house. It was a place where the industrial song of Coalwood subsided. I would sit on a dead log and listen to nothing except the beating of my own heart and the thoughts racing through my head.
Technically, my first acting job was in one of my videos for a song called 'Retrospect For Life,' which Lauryn Hill directed and featured an actress by the name of N'bushe Wright, who played my girlfriend who was about to be pregnant. I remember being so nervous about it, but now I feel like I can conquer the world with it.
A lot of people really didn't expect for me to have a record with Kendrick, but I proved them wrong. It's not easy to get Kendrick on a record, so it was a huge deal for me to have him featured on the song.
Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.
I haven't made anything I don't believe in. I've always started a movie with a song in my heart, and even when I'm a little unclear about it, something magical happens and it comes into focus in a way that I'm feeling good about.
One day, I was just fingering around on the keys of a Fender Rhodes piano, and I came up with this little riff, and all of a sudden, it morphed into a song. It had never been touched by a guitar, which was very weird for us. 'Under the Ground' is the first song I have ever written that had nothing to do with the guitar.
I was in a movie with Angelina Jolie called 'Life Or Something Like It' where I played her fiance, and I have a song in there.
I was 9 when I wrote 'Fate Stay with Me.' It was this fictional song about romance gone wrong.
