As a musician and a guitar player, I can noodle as well as anybody. But from my background as a session musician, I always try to play what is called for by the lyric and listening to the song. As a writer, that's what I do, too.
I don't think about Norfolk as I write songs, sadly no! But things like 'High' is a song about watching the dawn come up over the sea, and I've had many of those situations.
'Nothin' on You' by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I'd been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.
On every album I've put out, I've put diverse Canadian songs on it. They're not provincial album; my albums are national albums. There'll be a song about Saskatchewan and Vancouver and Nova Scotia on there.
In my opinion, I think sarcasm and humor in a song, without turning it into a novelty song, is really charming.
I'm looking forward to some more solo acoustic dates. That's a lot of fun for me, because I get to be alone with the song. And I get to hear every little nuance; if my instrument does something that I wasn't expecting, I get to chase that. Chase that down a little bit.
There were numerous times where, at the end of a week of working on a song, there was a part of it that we still weren't feeling, so we'd scrap the whole thing and start from scratch the next week.
For me, I've always wanted to be a nun. I mean, I think about what it's like to be a nun. And I've always been fascinated with nuns, and I have a nun collection, I've been collecting nuns for 20 years. And I have a song that I wrote, 'I Wanna Be a Nun,' when I was 25.
'Halo' I wrote with my grandpa in his nursing home. When I went to visit him, he'd often comment on my halo. But of course, I couldn't see. And he always - he had pictures of Jesus with these beautiful halos. And so I asked him if he'd write a song with me about Jesus' halo.
Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career so far, I have refused any song whose lyrics I haven't been comfortable with.
A song that sounds simple is just not that easy to write. One of the objectives of this record was to try and write melodies that continue to resonate.
'Hell Or High Water' was written after the end of a relationship, and I do feel like every Passenger album has the obligatory break-up song.
'Simply the Best' has always been one of my favourite songs and a song that I've always thought was far deeper than what you imagine it to be at first listen. I found the lyrics to be really, oddly beautiful, considering you rarely stop and think about them.
It's important to me that there's not just one story told about our city. 'LSD' is an ode to Chicago, a song for the complicated love I have for my city.
When Thug hears a song, he knows how the whole shape of the thing goes. He can nudge the whole frame to the left to make it offbeat and sound how he wants it to sound.
Talking about remixes, some people like to preserve what is original and some people give it a new meaning. Coming to Hip Hop, the biggest of the artists use sampling. You are changing the genre of the song and to be able to give old music in new package is also fair and people who have emotions attached to it - they are also not wrong.
I will have a song that I'm in love with for a couple of months and then I'll go to something else. That's just constantly changing. And sometimes I will go back to old one that I haven't heard for a long time.
It's hard to say a favorite song of my father's. I listen to all his stuff - a lot of the old stuff before the '70s.
I intend to keep writing Christmas songs. There's still a lot more about Christmas that can be captured and feel like old-time Christmas. A lot of the traditions haven't been explained in song.
Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series 'M*A*S*H,' and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet!
