'Barracuda' is very fun to play because it's like a galloping steed of a rock song.
Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math.
Garth Fundis is a song guy. He is in it for the right reasons; he's about the music. He doesn't ever try to talk you into recording something that you shouldn't. He gets it.
I've had this song in a drawer for a long time, maybe seven or eight years. Every time I'd do an album, I'd take it out and listen to it, and always liked what it had to say. Plus when Garth came in and sang on it, that made it really special.
Everyone who moves to New York City has a book or movie or song that epitomizes the place for them. For me, it's 'The Cricket in Times Square', written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams.
I was 17, and a friend said, 'Man, you've got to listen to this song,' and he played 'Man to Man.' From there on, I was hooked on country. Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black. Every show that came through America West Arena, I was there.
There is genuine healing in a beautifully crafted musical theatre song, like Stephen Sondheim's 'Losing My Mind,' or a pop music gem like Joni Mitchell's 'Help Me.'
The song came out to be a gem, just came out to be a really, really interesting rendition of it.
I'd write songs like 'One Big Holiday,' and we'd play it and say, 'It's too heavy for 'At Dawn.' Let's save it for the next one.' We had more time for that, but when you mix a song, the general rule of thumb for us is a song a day or usually a day and a half.
You know that genie where you get three wishes? One that has never changed for me is I would like to sing, and move an audience through song.
Even the king of phrasing, Frank Sinatra, did not do as well as Joe Cocker with his reinterpretation of 'Something' by George Harrison, which Sinatra called the greatest love song ever written.
I will be very grateful that I get to go out and play a song and get well paid for it.
I love Monk's song, 'Just a Gigolo.' It's probably a minor song for him, but whenever I hear a recording of him playing it, I'm mesmerized because Monk clearly loved pop music. He took it very seriously and made an amazing thing out of it.
If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me?
I am not greedy, so I would gladly give a song to someone else to sing if it makes more sense.
I can tell it all in song: pathos, gladness, love, joy, unhappiness.
Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance.
There's a punk-rock attitude, clearly, to 'Hated.' There's even a punk-rock attitude to 'The Hangover,' I think. We start the movie with a Glenn Danzig song.
I don't know rap. I can't tell you a Tupac song. But you put on some go-go, and I'll know it word-for-word. That's why I feel like I got my own sound - or a D.C. sound.
For me, a perfect pop song is something like 'This Year,' by the Mountain Goats.
