When I want to put out an album, I want to write it. I want to be able to say that I wrote my album, and all this stuff is from me.
It’s a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.
I think one thing you could probably say for all my albums is that they’re all pretty eclectic pop. There’s always a little bit of urban influence, some dance, a little bit of country, singer-songwriter, pop-rock. I like everything! On every album you can find that.
I wanted out of my record deal with EMI. They wanted me to record one type of album; I wanted to record the type of music I wanted to make.
The message from ‘Analog Man’ is that I’m back, and it won’t be 20 years until the next album.
I am sorry, but recording an album is just hard work; tedious, repetitive, and not very fun at all. Mixing is a bit better, but still pretty boring.
Barbra Streisand, for one, is one of my idols. I’ve listened to her since I was a little kid – the first album I ever bought was ‘A Star is Born’ with Kris Kristofferson.
I think most bands probably peak on their first album. We peaked on our third album. On the first album, I feel like I wish the production was a little better. I’ll always hear a song I don’t like. I look for what I could have done to make it better. It’s always difficult for me to listen.
I don’t attend an actual school but I’m still following through with high school. I do work with a tutor for about six hours a day. It’s hard core but definitely worth it, and it’s my main focus now – finishing up high school before I release my new album and apply to college.
The first jazz pianist I heard was Thelonious Monk. My father was listening to an album of his called ‘Monk’s Dream’ almost every day from the time I was born.
People often forget this – a vinyl album could only contain a maximum of 20 minutes per side!
I’m a sensitive guy. If you are a woman and you’re in any kind of emotional duress and you write a song about it, I’ll buy you album.
To me I think artists in general make a statement – and for the rest of their lives – every album, every book – are variations on a theme.
There’s always pressure on the second album – this one has to be the big one.
You can work on an album forever, but finishing it is a whole different deal.
I would be a liar if I said it wouldn’t be lovely and soothing – that’s the word – to have a hit single or a hit album.
I picked up the Joss Stone album, Josh Groban, and the new Norah Jones. I love, love, love Norah.
Whenever I release a record, it’s my record. It’s not a selfish thought. I may work all year ’round for other people. So, finally, when I come out with my own album, it should be me with the creative help of other musicians.
I never really made a full album in Los Angeles before.
Five years ago I figured we were at the top of our game and that was the best it was going to get, but with every album it seems to keep on building on itself.
That’s part of the reason I called the album ‘Shoot From The Hip.’ I did feel it was time to open up more.
Anytime you have a fellow artist say, ‘Loving the new Luke Bryan album,’ that’s awesome.
For my first album I wanted to make a record that would be intimate, deeply personal, and honest.
I tend to just do whatever I want on an album and try to make it work. I’m just adventurous. It’s most exciting to be at the edge of your abilities. I want to see how far I can push things.
I’m always sort of reflecting on what I do on what I’ve done. Usually before I make a new album, I’ll listen to the previous albums just to see where I’ve been.
You know, they wanted to do a Broadway album and every show was kind of a bomb. There was no music at all.
At the moment we’re trying to keep what we’ve learnt. Because we learnt a terrific amount with ‘Deep Purple In Rock,’ it took six months to make that album: we think it paid off, really. I can honestly say that it’s the first album we’ve been 100 percent satisfied with; it gave us a hell of a lot of confidence.
Puffy produced four of the tracks on the album. Those are the four songs that are collaborations between Puffy and me. And he gives me my space to work even when we work together, like with my producer and my vocal coach.
Why should we bother making a super high-quality, expensive album if nobody is going to pay for it anyway and will just download it for free as an MP3 that has no depth whatsoever because of the small file size?
Rejection is a universally embarrassing topic and ‘Electra Heart’ is my response to that. It is a frank album.
I understand that people want to just listen to a track and put it on their iPod, and that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but why can’t that exist hand in hand with an album? They’re such different experiences.
Between each album I try to gain a new insight that I didn’t have before and perhaps write a song about something that I’ve written about before, but from a fresh viewpoint.
The fans are very, very loyal. They’re always saying, ‘When is the next album?’ They know when I finish in the studio it’s got to be a few years before the next album.
Sometimes, a concept is needed to spark myself and the vocalist; sometimes a concept isn’t necessary for that spark. It all depends on the moment, because I don’t want to be that dude that every album has to be this story or that story.
I wanted to do the whole album in black and white, and it really killed me that when you see it in the light it’s got green in it. I don’t know what the hell that was about.
If you had a record company believing in you enough to cut an album then you had better have the ability to work the album on the road.
Quite understandably, people think that if there’s a six-year gap or whatever, that it’s taken me six years to make the album. It’s not really like that at all.
When I’m picking songs for an album I always want a song that I can relate to and that I have experienced. There’s nothing worse than watching an artist try and sell a song that isn’t believable coming from them.
By the time my first album was out, I had been out in Jamaica three or four years, but I had hits out at that time that were bona fide hits.
My first album was completed in three months.
What we hear now is great-sounding records with great-sounding grooves and loops. And the sound of these records is irresistible, but the craft of songwriting is just about over. That’s why, whenever I get an opportunity to do an album full of standards, I jump at it because I miss it.
The first album was 99 percent hard core to show you I was the best rhymer in the world.
It’s true, there’s a lot of melancholy in my music. I don’t know why, I’m not a melancholy person. I’ve always been drawn to it. Ever since I was a kid, if I had an album I would play the ballads on repeat.
Whether you hear me come out with another album or whether you hear any one of the Clan members, we’re always going to involve everybody. When I look at ‘Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Part II,’ I look at that as a Wu album. You feel me? Even though it was my brand and my thing that I done, I had my dudes on it.
To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.
Well, I heard of Sunny Ade, and looks as if his music is gonna be big on a global level, because I was in London the other day and some people asked me to review the album.
I remember I heard it in an interview with Michael Jackson one day, saying the art is gone, everybody makes records just to make a record. See, I always want the artist that try to build a whole body of music on one album, so you can enjoy it. So you could say, ‘I went with him here, I went with him here.’
All of these reissues were not authorized by me, I do not endorse them, the live album was put out without my permission, and I’ve not seen a dime at this point, either.
I think the problem with the term graphic novel is it sounds pompous, it sounds pretentious, whereas on the continent, they call it an album, which to me sounds, it’s got more much of a connotation of a kind of a music single and an album collection.
Then we did what we called basically I suppose a club tour in England, which was the time I think that our second album came out, we club toured around the whole country where the venues were hold to five hundreds upwards to that sort of thing you know.
I don’t have an album cover with me on a broomstick.
And the White Album is important to me for different reasons. One – I had left the band on the White Album.
I just kept it real and had the freedom to do what I want. It’s not designed for any age group. It’s not made for radio. There are no edits. The whole album contains explicit lyrics but that’s because you need it.
I sing some songs but don’t expect me to release an album anytime soon.
My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that – so I’ve tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the ’60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson’s songs.
It’s a bit cheeky as a rapper to make a singing album.
I’m so embarrassed by that album. I don’t even own it myself.
Well, I have a band, Sadie and the Hotheads, and we have an album that is already out that is available on our website.
