Each song has its own way that it likes to be done, but it can be more than one way. If you tap into it, you can feel it.
Yeah, but on the U.S Tour we threw a new song into the set almost every night. Ofcourse, you can’t do too many new songs every night as they’ve never heard it.
I remember when I would write a song as a kid, I would also write out on paper what the drums would do, what the bass would do, and what the vocals would be doing.
I had a song back in 1992 talking about ‘It’s all good.’ Then my partner Theo who used to work for 92.3 The Beat in L.A. started saying ‘You know it’s all good’ on the radio and everybody took it back to their soils like that was the new Cali word. But that’s a regular word form the Bay Area.
The song, ‘Life is Better,’ is about hip-hop. It’s about my love for hip-hop. And, you know, I go through all the artists from the beginning to the end, you know. And, well, not to the end, but since the beginning to now, you know.
You can lose people without them dying, and I have, from moving, from traveling. The emotion is real, it just doesn’t actually have to do with death. I’m singing about what I know, and it’s a song about longing for somebody who’s disappeared in your life.
Empires dissolve and peoples disappear, song passes not away.
Don’t Cry Daddy is a pretty sad song. He got to the end of it and it was just real quiet and Elvis says, I’m gonna cut that someday for my daddy. And, by God, he did. He lived up to his word.
It was just the next logical step from making succinct pop songs. What do you do after that? You make pop songs that are longer and more epic, that push the envelope. Imagine your favourite song, or something that you play over and over in the car, except that you don’t have to start it over as much.
I’m definitely a guitar player, but it’s the last thing I listen to in a song, after the singer and the drums.
I grew up in Harlem, and the kids used to tease me. You know that song ‘Bingo’? Well, they used to sing, ‘V-i-n-g-o, and Vingo was his name-o.’
I’ve always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I’m a sucker for it, whether it’s Linkin Park or Little Richard.
When you listen to a song, it should make you sit up and wonder, ‘Hey, what is this!’ or give you an inexplicable feeling of joy or relate beautifully to the music in you.
When I get up there, maybe I’m nervous for the first song, but then I get into it. It’s a lot of fun to stand up there. I always enjoy the moment when I’m actually standing on stage. When I’m done, I’m like, ‘Oh, I want to play one more song.’
People are People still gets played to death on ’80s stations. It was our first big break in America. It’s not exactly my favorite song.
Piracy was kind of hard: It took a few minutes to download a song. It was kind of cumbersome. You had to worry about viruses. It’s not like people want to be pirates. They just want a great experience.
The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.
I started rapping at the age of 12. That’s when I wrote my first song, but I was more intrigued on learning how the recording process works: how do you create music and what materials I needed. So I educated myself musically so that I could focus on creating my own.
I have never sung a whole song on my own before and I am not the best dancer in the world, but I would rather try and fall than not not try at all.
I was about to walk on stage at the Kansas Speedway – I was playing a NASCAR race – and I said to Scooter Carusoe, who was standing side stage, ‘I want to write a song called ‘Wanna Be That Song.’ Then I put my earphones back in and walked right out on stage.
‘Human’ was controversial within The Killers way before it was controversial to the rest of the world! It caused some problems within the band. Not to throw anybody under the bus, but it was pretty much me and Dave against Mark and Ronnie for a little while. We were standing up for the song.
Every song has a composer, every book has an author, every car has a maker, every painting has a painter, and every building has a builder. So it isn’t irrational to take this simple logic a little further and say that nature must have had a Maker. It would be irrational to believe that it made itself.
It’s really weird when we’re out of the country, whether we’re in Brazil or Greece or some crazy place like France or Germany. When you hear your song on the radio or in a store, and you’re in a different country, it’s really freaky and surreal.
You have to learn how to act a pop song. You have to find the balance of the pop from the pop song and the lyrical significance of the scene you are in.
There are a couple different factors that play into the decision of which songs to cover. It could either be we’re really inspired by a song that’s just come out or inspired by an international classic, but either way we bring it to the band.
‘Before I Ever Met You’ was the first one to come out and that just dives into the grit, and it’s pretty graphic about a relationship. For my first song, it was very special the way it happened, because I didn’t really hold anything back, and people responded to it.
All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.
I’m not blowing my own trumpet here, but I made a rap song 20 years ago with Afrika Bambaataa.
You could have written the biggest hit song, and all eyes are looking to you to write another one. It’s not a thankless job; it’s just an endless job.
I think anything that’s creative really takes my mind off whatever it is that I’m going through in my life. If you’re going through heartbreak, and you can write a song, it’s a wonderful win-win, because it takes your mind off the heartbreak, and you get to vent.
I’m very proud of ‘Will the Sun Ever Shine Again.’ That was a song written very close to the 9/11 event.
I got to choreograph a halftime dance with the cheerleading squad, which was all-female, at my high school. And I was the only boy, at the time. We did this whole routine to ‘Maria Maria’ by Santana, and ‘Thong Song’ by Sisqo – it was a mix.
I was telling people like ‘My Dawg’ gon’ be the song that get me out there. I knew it.
I sang a song called ‘Sugar Time.’ That was it. I had the bug.
It’s so interesting how you can take a bad situation and make a great song out of it that somebody else can listen to and have a completely different perspective of the song and have their own meaning. That’s what’s great about it.
I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on summer humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.
I don’t think you could pull one Bob Marley song that didn’t have quotes from the Torah or the Old Testament.
I wrote a techno song after I was deported. I was in America for a little bit, but then I was deported back to Germany. I was very sad.
The song ‘Baby Baby,’ I so love that song because I wrote it about my first daughter.
I always knew ‘My Dawg’ would be a hit, but I didn’t even know what a hit was. When I made the song I knew it sounded hard.
Widespread Panic discovered a couple of my songs and started doin’ ’em on the gigs. They’d take a song and expand it and everybody plays a long time and people really like that. But I made my living as a songwriter so I try to get to singin’ and get it over with.
In my off-time, I do record. Once in a while, I’ll just go into the studio if there’s a really good song that I have in my head and want to do. I think, as artists, you’re constantly in creative motion. If I stopped writing songs, then that’s a part of me that would stop in my life, and I need constant motion.
I’ve never written a song in my life. It’s all a big hoax.
When you do a song new live on stage, it’s kind of a bit weird until it gets worn in, you know, like oiled up a bit. It’s still a little bit stiff until you really thrashed at it for a few weeks.
I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.
It was my 16th birthday – my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do – write songs and sing them to people.
The ‘Billionaire’ song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It’s funny.
When you write a song, it may come from a personal space, but it very seldom actually represents you. It comes out of a sort of mood of melancholy, somehow. It’s almost theatrical.
I always feel a rise in my scalp or in the backs of my wrists when something is special, whether it be a song or a man.
It kind of renews my faith in humankind that there’s long attention spans left out there that can listen to a 12-minute song.
We kind of look at music as something very natural in people’s lives. I mean, most of us can relate to music in some sort of shape and form, and if you think about it, most of us remember the first time we kissed someone, what kind of music was playing or the song that was playing on our friend’s birthday.
It’s not just about getting a song on the radio or appearing on television. It really is about helping people change their lives one day at a time.
