I am fine with 'Puppy Love.' I hated it for a while. But I still sing it. I have a country version, a sexy version and a cheesy nightclub version. I am trying to infuse it with maturity. I will never escape that song. I will always be Mr. 'Puppy Love.'
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
It was a lot of insensitivity, especially as maybe as far as the ‘Africa' video goes. But the song was about a fantasy.
If I'm inspired to make a certain kind of song, I'm going to make that kind of song, no matter if it's what they know me as or think I am.
Dave and I had been song writers in Nashville, trying to get around, out hustling, trying to meet people. We randomly met Hillary out in town one night. She said she was a singer. I asked her if she would like to write some songs with Dave and me, and a week later she came over. Instantaneously we had this chemistry.
I always felt each instrumental and vocal inflection had to be special... I'd spend almost as much time on those as I'd spend on the song itself.
'Something/Anything?' was kind of a different record, since I'm playing everything myself. A lot of the songs on there have a particular kind of instrumentation that is much like a guitar quartet, and in some ways, it's an exceptional song on that record because so much of the writing on 'Something/Anything?' is piano-oriented.
When I'm making a song that's very Grimes, it just feels very insular and it feels weird to have someone else do something on it.
It's a very interesting thing because I can start mixing a song and leave the room and come back and maybe just slide one lever to a certain point, and it just - it's a certain feeling that it gives you when you know it's right.
At first, I didn't focus that much on the Internet. I was more, 'I'm going to write songs,' and I'd have sung that song out in a club, pub, or a jam session or whatever 10 times before I recorded it. We live in an Internet age, and if you don't embrace it, you get left behind a bit.
That's the miracle of music. No one can reinterpret a Picasso, but a song can be remixed and covered and interpreted in an infinite number of ways. It's a living thing.
You see the genius that Whitney Houston has as an interpreter of material, and you realize why genius can be applied to only a few interpretive performers. She finds meaning and depth and soulfulness in a song that often the writer and composer never really knew was there.
I don't really get heckled! I think it's because I might burst into song at any moment and even rude people have a weird respect for not interrupting singing!
There's a lot of craft that goes into achieving a hit song - at the beginning of your career, you're usually more inspiration than craft, and you get great when those intersect. A skilled songwriter can get you to that intersection.
I'm super-obsessed with 'Intervention.' I wrote a song about it.
I love Emmylou Harris's version of my song, 'Sweet Old World.' Her intonation is great.
That is what intrigues me; songwriting and song structure and expression.
And now that Martina McBride knows of T.I., and T.I. knows of Martina McBride, that made me very happy, too. It's introducing worlds to different people and bringing them together with a song.
I remember the first time I ever showed my parents a song that I had written. The content may have been a little darker than they were used to, or really introspective in a way that may have been uncomfortable. I thought they'd retaliate with some kind of judgment or concern about whether I was feeling all right, but they were proud of it.
I just hear a beat and start mumbling words. I just hear sounds and rhythms, and it just kind of comes intuitively. Formatting a song, figuring out a flow, how I respond to the beat.
