Songwriting is hard - it's so easy to fall into the same traps. It's not like I wake up and songs flow out of me.
You can't outdo 'Street Songs' and I didn’t even try. [It] had that special magic that comes with timing and good vibrations and you can't even try to capture that exactly again.
If you have a recital to do, you have to memorize the songs. I never use music when I do recitals. It produces an instant barrier, both for yourself and the audience.
I find writing songs hard, because it does not come naturally to me. I never set out to be a songwriter or a singer.
I like The Smiths - I would love to do a song with The Smiths, because they are so sonically different.
When you work on an album for three and a half years, you're kind of ready for it to get out there. To have your songs reach people.
I think I just get excited by music, and, like, singing is a very physical thing. It releases endorphins in your body. You're using almost muscle in there, and I think that adrenaline really helps to kind of make the songs fresh every time.
It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater… it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content.
Gospel songs to me are about the mansion in the sky, and washed in the blood of Christ's crimson blood, songs that are filled with biblical wording that's no longer understood by a lot of people.
No one worries about genre when they're dancing. They're not asking themselves, 'Is this song a dubstep song?'
What I don't like to hear in music is something has not been thought through: that a sound is just there randomly. I want to make sure that every single little noise that's in my song is there because it's supposed to be there.
I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.
I never feel like I need to make a song that sells 5 million copies; that's not the point of why I make music. It's great if that happens, like it did with 'Clarity,' but my goal is to always make a better track than the last one.
I really like working with unique and unknown artists, as they usually bring something fresh to a song.
The two biggest hits (by Machito)... were about that enduring Cuban song topic-food: 'Sopa de pichn' [pigeon soup] and 'Paella'. If you think that all songs about food are double entendres for sex... Well, maybe all songs about food can be double entendres, but in many periods of Cuban history, for many people, food has been harder to get, and the subject of more fantasies, than sex.
I'm sick of being self-referential. I don't want to do any more songs that can be accused of being personal.
Penitentiary songs have been a love of mine for years. They are so wonderful.
A lot of my albums that Ive done, a lot of the songs have been the first take. Its before you mess with it too much - you can take away all the spontaneity and the emotion of something by trying to make it sound perfect.
The songs keep on writing themselves, and I really love them. It's as close as I get to a religion.
If Paul McCartney tells me that so-and-so song is his favorite song, what do I care? What do I care what anybody else says?
Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.
I love all things Queen - their songs are epic storytelling.
It's hard to believe the life that 'Someone Like You' has taken on. It's proof that people hunger for great songs - and they are open to different interpretations of songs they love.
I decided I was just going to sing the type of songs I gravitated toward and inspired me and moved me. I was going to let the people whose job it was to decide what places to put it, and let them do that. I'll stick to the singing part.
I naively thought I had to go door to door, find somebody who could record me singing some songs. I didn't know Music Row, I didn't know anything! So after six or seven months, I went back home and went to college.
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