I sing and play guitar, but songwriting is how I pay my rent. And so I didn’t really need a lot of publicity to get people to record the songs.
I’ve been a list maker for years, even before I was a musician. I was always writing things down and kept long lists of things that would make good album titles and things like that. I’m constantly thinking in terms of songwriting.
I started quite late. I only discovered that I could write a song when I was, like, 17… some musicians, they’re starting out, writing songs when they’re, like, 12, 13. I never thought I would go into songwriting when I was that young.
I feel like I kind of earned my stripes working with The Stereotypes. It was maybe my 6th songwriting session I’ve ever been to, and they just gave me and a writer I used to write with 3-4 tracks and kinda just let us come up with whatever.
I take songwriting very seriously and I wouldn’t want anything I do to be construed as frivolous or mundane.
The rule of songwriting: say what you want to say, say it again, say it a different way, then say it again.
On ‘Utopia,’ I mix sick beats with ethereal elements while trying to keep the focus very much on the songwriting. If you strip any of these songs down to just the vocal and a piano, there’s a real song in there.
In my opinion, that’s one of the hardest things to do in songwriting: crafting a song that speaks to you but, at its core, is a simple concept.
People keep putting limitations on themselves and creating this reality that soul music is dead. That’s only in their reality. It’s not true. To me, Adele is R&B. Bruno Mars is R&B. It’s just good songwriting and songs. That is going to last.
It wasn’t so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.
I’m an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don’t really have any music theory, they don’t have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it’s mostly because we don’t know what the rules are. It’s easy for us to go to certain places, so I’m not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.
I got a call from my manager who told me Diplo was working on a country project. I put my vocal on the songwriting demo and my team sent the song to his team. Evidently they fell in love with it… and the rest is history.
Songwriting is such an intricate part of me as an artist and as a person; I couldn’t just let someone else do it.
I’ve always used songs and music and songwriting as a way to sort of let feelings go.
When I was 13, I started writing songs, and it fell into my lap all of a sudden. I wrote poems and journals, but that’s when it switched for me to songwriting. That’s when I wanted to do everything. It was like a fire all of a sudden. I started coming to Nashville and moved here when I was 15.
In advertising, you have a small window to say the most you can. That’s what songwriting is. The difference is, you get to put the leaves on the trees and colour ’em in.
For me, songwriting is something I have to do ritually. I don’t just wait for inspiration; I try to write a little bit every day.
My view is that the great songwriting happened between 1920 and 1960. We’re all, in our different ways, descended from the great songwriters of that era.
In Nashville, everybody just wants to write the best songs. So it’s a very inviting songwriting community.
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.
There’s a lot of vulnerability in songs – I’m not talking about pop songs – from people that are in the art of songwriting more than the commercial enterprise of it.
I have always been musically inclined, whether it’s been playing the santoor from a young age or writing poetry that has now evolved into songwriting. So, I wouldn’t really call it a focus shift, but just pursuing a career path I am passionate about.
I will write a verse or a story and bring it into a songwriting session, because that’s what’s big in Nashville – the collaborative part of songwriting.
I think Bruno Mars is a great example of a great voice and classic songwriting with a twist that makes it contemporary. I think he’s done a great job of it. I think Katy Perry has undeniable songs for what she does, for that pop market. And, if we’re talking in the truly pop market, I would say those two.
Hearing about a visual artist’s approach can change the way you think about songwriting.
There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting.
It’s not that I have resisted songwriting, it’s just not something I felt I have had to do. I’ve just not woken up and thought, I must do this. But I have often heard music that I have instantly felt ‘I have to sing that song’.
First thing, I throw on some jeans, a T-shirt and my Keds sneakers and make coffee. That is actually my favorite time of day. That is when I do my songwriting, when I am in writing mode.
I’ve always wanted to sing and to be an entertainer. After high school, I moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles and started songwriting. But I didn’t really get serious until then.
It’s true when they say songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. In truth, what happens is… songs comes through you.
On ‘Van Halen,’ I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I’d say that at the time of ‘Fair Warning,’ I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people’s minds I’m just a gunslinger.
Those things interest me a lot in songwriting – the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.
Songwriting is what I do, and there could be worse burdens to carry.
It’s nice to finally have a CD out which reflects my songwriting, my singing and the band that I have.
I ended up writing songs and growing up in public with my songwriting. And it’s a good thing for me back then: in the early ’70s, there was a thing called artist development, where an artist could find his feet, find himself, find his voice. I think I made five or six albums before I sold five or six albums.
