Sometimes I'm trying to communicate a feeling. Sometimes I can't piece it together into any kind of coherant thesis. I'm just trying to evoke some kind of mood, and put some kind of idea in somebody's head. If Marshall McLuhan or Harold Innis were looking at it, they would tell you that the genre of rock music isn't the best way to deliver a political message because it distorts it, it makes it into entertainment. Perhaps the best political message is just to speak it to somebody. I think that's something I'm always writing about in songs, just how to mediate, how to present something.
The place that I worked I used to joke about it. There was a, every morning at 10:30 I'd come into work and I'd go into this cubicle that had a little upright piano and fake white cork bricks on the wall, and a little slate that came out of the wall that you could actually write on. And a door that locked from the outside. Every day from 10 to 6, we'd go in there and pretend that we were 13 year old girls and write these songs. That was the gig.
There's a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody. There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea. Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don't work creatively for me.
I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’m concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!
Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.
Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.
I'm just writing love songs. I'm not trying to be pop. I'm not trying to be jazz. I'm not trying to be anything. I'm just writing love songs. And everyone loves a love song.
You are daydreaming about the future because you have not tasted the present. Start tasting the present. Find out a few moments where you are simply delighting. Looking at the trees, just be the look. Listening to the birds, just be a listening ear. Let them reach to your deepest core. Let their song spread all over your being.
There are a few investment managers, of course, who are very good - though in the short run, it's difficult to determine whether a great record is due to luck or talent. Most advisors, however, are far better at generating high fees than they are at generating high returns. In truth, their core competence is salesmanship. Rather than listen to their siren songs, investors - large and small - should instead read Jack Bogle's The Little Book of Common Sense Investing.
Most of the songs are, in a roundabout way, actually addressed to myself, there's a certain aspect of the songs that's very confessional, very unadulterated...It was a very unfettered, spiritual experience.
I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.
I have an office full of product from brands trying to be in videos and an inbox full of songs from artists, but at the end of the day if the artist doesn't support the brand or it doesn't make sense for the song, then it will never work. What we do is try to pair them up so that both sides are happy.
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. In effect, the people who change our lives the most begin to sing to us while we are still in darkness. If we listen to their song, we will see the dawning of a new part of ourselves.