I don't remember things initially when listening to music. Like, I don't remember where I first heard a song, I don't have nostalgic attachment to a song in that it reminds me of such and such a time or place. I think I probably did experience that somewhat when I was not a full-time, professional musician, but I don't think music works that way for people who are in it constantly.
You know, most love songs are not cheesy and corny. Most love songs are complaints, I think. Or about unrequited love, coming at it from some oblique angle. Only the ones that say "I love you" over and over are the cheesy, corny ones that people complain about
If the songs were in lumps, then you would expect to understand what was going on in the plot. Which is not a realistic goal. And also the instrumentation is different for every show, so it's more varied sonically. And people are free to make up their own plots, of course. There are pretty dense and complicated plots, and they're simple songs.
I write songs by sitting around in bars, so drinking songs are a little obvious. It's surprising that I don't write entirely drinking songs, since I am, in fact, drinking while writing the song. Drinking and love are the two principal sources of pleasure outside of music. There's only so many sources of pleasure, really. That's about it. Well, there are other arts as well. But none of them are as pleasurable as music, on a physical level.
If you start out with a song sounding like Britney Spears, and you end up with a song sounding like Pauline Oliveros, you'd better have pretty good liner notes explaining what on earth you mean.
Well, there are certainly original things to say. But I'm not sure that a pop song is the appropriate format to say them in.
I don't think there are any clichés I try to avoid. As soon as I spot a cliché, I go for it. I feel like clichés are the most useful thing in songwriting. They're the tool on which you build all the rest of the song.
I think continually of those who were truly great . Who, from the womb, remembered the soul 's history Through corridors of light where the hours are suns , Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire , Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song .
I didn't really want to write just lyrics, but I wanted to meet Leonard Bernstein. Music was always the first reason I was writing songs.
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
I like songs that are part of a dramatic texture, and therefore I like the scenes to be active. I wanna follow the story and that means you lean on the actors.
So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.
Puzzles are like songs - A good puzzle can give you all the pleasure of being duped that a mystery story can. It has surface innocence, surprise, the revelation of a concealed meaning, and the catharsis of solution.
On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.
I don't listen to recordings of my songs. I don't avoid it, I just don't go out of my way to do it.
I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.
Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.
It's hard to think back. I didn't even know I was going to do it, make actual records. But I was always making up songs, once I figured out that you could do it. I think it's pretty much the same, but there's less urge to get it moving out there. There was a time when it seemed like it was really super important to the audience and now it's just medium-important for people to like us. But that's okay.
I just imagine that every song in and of itself is great, but when you add them all up, it's too much of me maybe.
I just don't think people listen. I mean, they can't listen to a whole album closely without checking their iPhone or wanting to skip to their favorite song, or putting something else on, practically. That's why the zone out is a good thing.
Besides, going on tour and playing songs and arranging things, going to practice, it's all I know to be productive.
Maybe I don't have the patience to make a virtue of necessity - the patience to carry something all the way through, and to actually say something. Lately, the songs are more jagged and they don't really lend themselves to that. I just take it one bit at a time.
With some songs, I have written narratives or I've tried to carry it through, but generally the things that were more genius, as far as I was concerned, were not that.
The narrative songs were well-written, like an article in The New Yorker. They're nice and pat. They're more like I'm just showing I can do that when I write a song like that. It's not my true calling.
Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.
