‘Mama I’m Coming Home’ is one song that I think is incredible. One of his best songs ever written. Lemmy wrote the lyrics to that.
Pop music has greater power to change people and to affect people because it’s a universal language. You don’t have to understand music to understand the power of a pop song.
I wrote that song for my wife, and it’s what some guy who’s sitting under a tree would be singing to the woman of his life, telling her how wonderful she is. To me, that’s more lasting than something that sounds like it belongs on a movie soundtrack.
In The Go-Go’s, my philosophy is that I contribute whatever the song requires. I never think, ‘What can I put in here to show off the latest trick that I just picked up?’ What I think is, ‘What’s required from me as a drummer to make this a better song?’
By the time I’m in the studio recording my parody, 10,000 parodies of that song are on YouTube.
With ‘Start With Me,’ I sent it to Gunna and he sent it right back. I didn’t have to ask him. If I send you a song, you gonna vibe to it and if you don’t, it’s cool.
It’s not so uncommon for me to get so wrapped up in a song that I cry several times when I sing them. That’s the difference between my music and some of the other folks.
If there is place for music that I do in Bollywood, then I would surely like to sing a song in a Hindi film.
I have a song called ‘Waffles Are Better Than Pancakes.’ If I can’t be goofy, I’ll go insane.
‘Rise Up’ is definitely my baby. I think it was a gift because, you know, it’s like God just spoke to me and wrote that song. It’s very powerful.
The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.
Each time I play a song it seems more real.
Last tour my bass rig was breaking down every other night. That was a pain. We would get on stage and Trey would count off the song, and I’d play the first note and nothing would be there. Those guys would just roll their eyes.
I try to tell a story musically in a song.
Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony.
Being an artist doesn’t just mean you have a song. That doesn’t make you an artist. The word ‘artist’ means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists – Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West – are doing the most.
My competition is always with my previous song. Each time I start working on a new track, I try to make it better than my last one.
I can plunk out enough chords to write a song, but I’m completely afraid to play guitar in front of other people. It’s a fear of failure, I guess.
I did write a letter to the archdiocese who’d banned the song, Only the Good Die Young, asking them to ban my next record.
It won’t be fair on my part to name one song that brought me fame, but ‘Suit Suit’ from ‘Hindi Medium’ is close to my heart, and it quite turned tables for me.
The first mp3 I downloaded, which I guess was illegal, was a symphonic rendering of the Super Mario Brothers 1-1 theme song. It was great. I was like, ‘This is blowing MIDI files out of the water. This is the future, right here.’
The funny thing is, people’s perceptions of what a song is about is usually wrong a majority of the time. But they’re still going to read what they want to into it.
I made my first song when I was 9 years old. Just beating on garbage cans, having people beat box.
If I don’t relate to a song, I won’t sing it. The thing is that if I wrote it, I’m always going to relate to it.
Music is very subjective. You may or may not like a song, but folk and regional language have a connectivity that binds different people together, who slowly begin to relate to it.
My song in ‘Vaastav’ was my debut dance number.
The issue I had with the Lightspeed albums was that usually the main purpose with them was to fulfil really dorky musical goals, like, ‘I wonder if I can do that,’ and it was all very personal. It was more that once I’d finished the goal of what the song was, I was kind of done. It was like ticking boxes.
I’m not a folk or jazz singer, more a hard-edged pop singer – with some rock, and song hooks.
Music isn’t like news, where it’s what happened five minutes ago or even 10 seconds ago that matters. With music, a song from the 1960s could be as relevant to someone today as the latest Ke$ha song.
The song ‘Tyler Durden’ is about the movie ‘Fight Club,’ so obviously, it’s not a personal experience, but I love that song. It’s my favorite song.
When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.
Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel’s song, which had lost its way and come on Earth, and sang on undyingly, smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds, and putting for the while an angel’s nature into us.
I think in order to accomplish anything in life, you have to visualize yourself there – accepting the award, hearing your song on the radio, whatever it is – or you lose the willpower and the drive.
Writing a song is much like being an author. Yes, we all have tools to write (everyone has a brain I hope!), but that doesn’t all of a sudden make us best selling authors.
One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.
‘Dirt On My Boots’ is a very different song. I heard the melody, and I heard the lyrics, and I heard the drive of that song. I totally related. It was kinda me when I was on my bulldozer working for my dad.
‘Friday’ is about hanging out with friends, having fun. I felt like it was my personality in that song.
There was a time when pop music and rock music were really reaching for the stars and were not ashamed to be experimental. You think of a song like ‘Shout’ by Tears for Fears. That’s a massive global No. 1 hit, and yet the subject matter is very dark.
It’s never easy to write a song. It’s the most difficult thing I do.
‘Safe Harbor’ is a state of mind… it’s the place – in reality or metaphor – to which one goes in times of trouble or worry. It can be a friendship, marriage, church, garden, beach, poem, prayer, or song.
I was in a karaoke video in 1991, for a song called ‘Sukiyaki,’ which is a very famous Japanese song, and I’ve actually heard from people that they’ve been in bars in Asia where they’ve seen me come up in the ‘Sukiyaki’ video that they play behind you. I’m in that. I’m in a karaoke video.
With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It’s almost like watching a scene from a film, and that’s what I go about trying to catch in a song.
Whether I am performing for an elite crowd or a crowd of 20,000 people – the moment someone asks for ‘Agneepath,’ and I respond ‘Agneepath’ chahiye?’ the noise in the crowd, shows that this song has become huge.
‘Storm’ was the first song I did as a member of YG. The record gave me a lot of pressure. I didn’t think I was prepared at the time.
Initially, I’d written a normal love song. Later, I wrote Corona Kannala.’ I say cheesy because we used a lot of contemporary references.
When I was younger, I used to do that a lot: I would hear a part of a song that would really relax me and then put it on repeat. That would send me to sleep. It was quite obvious classical music, people like Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel.
I’d rather let the song live and, as I get older, I’m less absorbed with the clothing. The older I get, I just wanna write good songs.
Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this dark quality.
‘Tim Timtya’ was different from what I usually do. I had to develop a texture to go with the song. In fact, many told me I sounded like Shreya Goshal, which came as a pleasant surprise. Transitioning from tracks like ‘Sunny Sunny’ to this one was quite different.
It was a fabulous time, doing ‘Hear My Song.’
After talking to people and meeting them every day, I realize that a song can be written from one perspective with an objective in mind. What is crazy about it is that many different people can take one song a totally different way. That is so cool, since music is a universal thing and a very personal thing.
I’ve always had a fascination with pirates. You know, I’ve written a song completely inspired by I want this to feel like pirates, you know, fighting together, made a music video about it, yada, yada.
It’s an enthralling experience to be in front of the mic and record a song.
U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don’t really know what we’re doing and when we do, it doesn’t seem to help.
As I’ve gone along, I felt like I was discovering an aspect of my voice that I didn’t know was there: an ability to interpret a song in a way that makes it more accessible.
I’ve always loved ‘Umbrella.’ Funny enough, my ex-husband wrote that, and I’m not saying it was meant for me or anything – people will start twisting this – it is Rihanna’s song! But I’ve always loved it.
