If you’re writing anything decent, it’s in you, it’s your spirit coming out. If it’s not an expression of how a person genuinely feels, then it’s not a good song done with any conviction.
I think a good song is a good song is a good song.
With good music, yes, we can bring people together because a good song will touch your soul no matter what and where it is coming from.
I’ve been through almost every type of obsession as far as music genres go, so I usually say I just like a good song, but the songs that are the most universal that a person on the other side of the world knows and can relate to is a very powerful entity.
I’m not saying you have to be totally despondent or anything, but… in New York, it’s cold sometimes; it rains sometimes; even if everything in your life is great, bad weather can set the mood. You can write songs in New York because it’s not always perfect. To write a good song, things can’t be perfect.
I think I was 15 the first time I wrote a good song.
I felt my music wasn’t aiming at anybody. Everything I was doing was because it was a good song.
If you’ve got a good song, it’s easy to play. But you can’t make a bad song sound good no matter who you have to play on it.
As a songwriter, you try your best to write a good song, and you like nothing better than hearing a good song. It’s easy to admire a great song, and you want to share out of enthusiasm.
There’s an easy way to tell if you have a good song. You get hit in the head with a message, and you get hit in the feet with a rhythm. You’re beaten up with music. It’s a beautiful thing when that happens.
That’s what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.
Right from day one, you know when you’ve written a good song.
A good song always has to do with the person representing it – how they’re feeling in that moment – but I think my songs don’t need to be exclusive in terms of gender or race or that kind of thing.
When you know you have a good song, when you’re onstage, even if it’s just a weird, basic energy, you know your song is good.
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