I aim to write songs in a way that you don't have to have gone to Ghana to relate to it, you really just have to have a heart.
When you're writing a song and there are five people invested in it, it's easy for one person to say, 'Oh, this song is about this and that', and everyone has to hear the idea and see if they can do better.
To create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish.
My touring isn't about collecting souvenirs and always being on the go. My souvenirs are writing in my journal and creating new music, because that fits easily into my backpack when I'm travelling around the world. It's something that I can share later with fans or with future family members.
Sometimes touring can warp reality because you're never in one place long enough to get a feel for it. You don't interact with people long enough to know what real life is. That's why a lot of artists write songs about longing and missing people when they're on the road. I do my best to keep my mind open and I read a lot when I'm on tour, so I hope I have good things to write about. I'm constantly in the songwriting process.
I try not to write songs. I would rather emote them, and I found myself going back to my room every night while on my trip, just pouring out new songs and new stories about what I was seeing, what I was feeling.
I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing.
I could experience vulnerability if I just constantly gave myself away without ever taking time out once a day or a couple times a day or whatever it is I need to restore, whether it's more sleep, or whether it's going to see a movie or writing something new.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon would often write a song a day, so I have the same workmanlike philosophy.
The easiest songs to write are pure fiction. There is no limit to how you can tell the story. I find it difficult when I'm replaying an event through a song.
When I sit down to write a song, I really want the message of healing to thrive and transcend all ages.
I write my miserable songs. I write songs about disgust and self-pity. We’re all going to have bummer moments. That’s not the stuff I choose to share.
I love writing songs with people, which is about really taking risks, throwing yourself over the falls and really seeing what you're made of and seeing how it sticks. Seeing how others react to it, and seeing also how it can become a melody and how it can really take off from your experience. It's a way of seeing life unfold on the page before me.
I love writing and the little filmmaking I have attempted, but comics is the means of artistic expression that feels most comfortable to me. It's also still a largely uncharted medium with enormous unrealized potential. I like finding new ways to communicate an idea or a feeling, ways that can't be duplicated in other media, so I take great pleasure in the invention and exploration that comics necessitates.
I did a lot of freelance desk publishing jobs when I graduated from college. I sort of earned a living doing that while I was writing plays, which was what I wanted to do. My hope was to become a playwright.
Write what you’re scared about.
Everything that I write about is a kernel of something that probably happened to me or one of my writers that I've co-opted and made it seem like it's mine.
I write pretty much year-round, but I definitely do more when a deadline is looming.
It's great to write for actors when you know who they are. I think I prefer it.
There are no real guidelines or maps in Australia as to how to write a show, whereas in Hollywood it's where the TV industry is created and there's a lot of work that goes into development.
wanted to highlight that to a certain extent and go deeper into that direction. I also try to write each song in a different key, so I can be as diverse as I can. I'm always trying to push the envelope and not be complacent or happy in one spot. As far as the grooves on this record are concerned, I think we just tried to experiment in that realm.
I think it's stripped down as far as electronics go, but we just wanted to write a record that we felt better represented how we sound live with more of a rock feel, which is the direction we've been heading. It's just an evolution of the band throughout the years. We worked on this record longer than any other record, so I don't know if "stripped down" is how I would put it; I think it is a little bit more raw sounding.
I think great songs can come from anywhere and you constantly have to be able to look out for those. I think a lot of the times people will try too hard to write everything themselves and therefor miss out on great songs that way.
Of course I planned to write the Great American Novel; that lasted about a week, at which point I decided I had nothing to say that could possibly qualify. So I wrote a romance instead.
I do write songs with a political dimension to them sometimes, but I'm always slightly appalled by it when I do.
