I was just in the middle of singing a song about how broke we were and now my cell phone rings.
I’m all for a good slow song and I love all different kinds of music.
When I was a teeny little girl, I was in dancing school, and I sang. We had to put a dance to a song, so I went to the 10-cent store one day and looked at all the sheet music. It was all laid out, and I picked ‘Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.’
Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn’t burn up any fossil fuel, doesn’t pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
I had a really great performance with Steven Tyler in the movie ‘Be Cool.’ I performed ‘Cryin’,’ so we recorded the song beforehand. But I didn’t get to meet him until I hit the stage with him, and we had a live performance with 30,000 people in the audience, and that was for the movie.
Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.
You could make any song sound creepy if you wanted. It’s all about the inflection.
The tune ‘All My Friends,’ we recorded because our friend who wrote the song, Scott Boyer, passed way, and Gregg Allman had passed and he had recorded the song on his first solo record.
Came from a song that I made from, like, 2012 – there was some phrase like ‘Rap Monster’, and I just, I thought it was so cool. But as I grow up, and as I came to America, I think it felt like too much. So I just abbreviated it to ‘RM’, and it could symbolize many things. It could have more spectrums to it.
Every so often, if I’m in a melancholy mood, I’ll sing ‘Desperado’ in my shows. I’ll sit alone at the piano and play it as a solo. The song feels like an old friend – except now it’s saying, ‘You were a desperado once, but you worked your way out of it.’
A lot of music influences me in other ways than this, but I’ve always taken a lot of influence from Stevie Wonder, Frank Ocean, and Jeff Rosenstock for the Rex music. They were also the first three artists that released albums where I enjoyed every song.
The lyrics are so important to me. And that there is something going on in the lyrics. That the song actually has something to say.
Once a song’s out there, it’s no longer mine. And that’s the whole purpose of music: to belong to people.
Wine and women do not go with song. Alcohol is the worst enemy of the imagination.
In 2012, I dropped a song called ‘Like To Party,’ and that just took me all over the world.
I can remember when I was just, like, about four years old in Compton, and my mother would have me stack 45s, stack about ten of them, and when one would finish, the next record would drop. It was like I was DJ’ing for the house, picking out certain songs and so this song would go after that song.
You know Nashville, there’s people that are ten times more talented than me, ten times better singer than me, song writer than me, but for some reason you get the ball and now – and now you run with it. And you do the best you can.
Gunna was the second person I ever made a song with.
I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff, but I began to meet younger kids, not kids from my Beatle generation, who would say, We really love this song.
What can I say? I’m just a relevant dude. It’s just natural. My hunger’s still there. I still keep my ear to the streets. I record every song like it’s my last. I just love music. I’m blessed.
‘Halo’ I wrote with my grandpa in his nursing home. When I went to visit him, he’d often comment on my halo. But of course, I couldn’t see. And he always – he had pictures of Jesus with these beautiful halos. And so I asked him if he’d write a song with me about Jesus’ halo.
If I like a song, I’ll just keep playing it, and it never gets old.
I felt that group vocals for ‘Airplane’ coming from all the BTS members who’ve been together through this journey would create an even more heartfelt song.
I think every revolutionary act is an act of love. Every song that I’ve written, it is because of my desire to use music as a way to empower and re-humanize people who are living in a dehumanizing setting. The song is in order to better the human condition.
The jazz rhythm won’t be understood by the bulk of my audience. That’s the problem. We can get away with maybe one tune a night. It depends on where we place it. A song like ‘Beyond the Sea,’ the fans love that. It’s fresh.
I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than an hour on any one song, but that doesn’t count the thinking that goes on beforehand.
Snow Tha Product was dope. She wanted me on a song, so I did it for her. I ain’t charge her nothing.
All I know is, I play the guitar, beat it out, and sing a song that has some damn resonance that we feel as musicians. We send it out and people get it, and that’s a good thing.
If my life was a song the title would probably be ‘Clumsy’, ’cause I’m clumsy.
‘Float On’ was a fine song, but I was still writing the lyrics on the last day we were working on it and deciding if it was something we wanted to put on the record.
I guess the point of that song ‘Troublemaker, Doppelganger’ is trying to navigate the worth of beauty and if it’s hurtful or helpful to value beauty. If it’s a curse or a blessing. Is that something really negative and morbid, like the hearse, or is it the limousine – a glamorous symbol of enjoying life?
A good song never gets old.
I think when you sign a recording deal, you think, ‘I’m going to put out a song and have a hit right away. I’ll be a giant superstar. I can take over the world now.’ But I put out a song, and it did OK. It wasn’t like leaps and bounds.
‘Welcome to Atlanta’ was a song I wanted to do on my first album. The idea was for me and Outkast to do it, but I could never come up with a beat for us to do it. Outkast beats and my beats were very different.
‘Kiss Me.’ That’s my ‘Twilight’ tune, a song you’d have on the ‘Twilight’ soundtrack.
In pop or rock you can make a fast song or a slow one, but in disco there is really just the one rhythm.
