You can't just sing the song and live another life.
Whether it be a reggae song, rock song, a love song, the main thing was just to, whatever I was feeling, to try to capture that emotion.
The whole life of a song doesn't end with the way that it sounds on the record. How does this song grow? What works live? What do people like to sing along to?
Basically, I didn't want to sing anything for the sake of singing it. There were some songs where I really wailed, but because it's such an intimate space anything I chose to sing simply to make sound was going to come off an inauthentic. So I was really happy with where it landed - every song I sang, I loved for one reason or another. I didn't have to worry about selling a song.
I always know when a song is good or close to finished. When I sing it, it makes me feel the emotion. My tears will start flowing or I'll start laughing. I'll start feeling whatever intensity or emotion was the seed of that song.
Live well. Sing out, sing loud, and sing often. And God bless the child that's got a song.
Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.
The song 'Hymnostic' is kind of a gospel song, and that song is really fun to sing with as many people as possible. And anyone can sing it, you know?
I sang my song called "In This Song." David Foster wrote the song for me. I thought that I should sing a ballad song.
An audience will let you know if a song communicates. If you see them kind of falling asleep during the song, or if they clap at the end of a song, then they're telling you something about the song. But you can have a good song that doesn't communicate. Perhaps that isn't a song that you can sing to people; perhaps that's a song that you sing to yourself. And some songs are maybe for a small audience, and some songs are for a wide audience. But the audience will let you know pretty quickly.
I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a single song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.
But I'll never write another Missing You' again as long as I live. I hope that I'll write a good song, but I don't think that I'll be able to write another song that will reach people that much.
What I'm trying to do is just sing what comes to my body in the context of the song. And if you go by the emotion of the song, it's almost like stepping into a city. Cities have certain customs and rules and laws you can break, and that's what I was doing.
When I first start writing a song, I usually write the title first, then the song, and I'll sing the song in my head and think of a visual of the song. If I can't think of a visual behind the song, I'll throw the song away.
'Unbelievers' was a song that we felt like we could tackle, so that's one of the reasons we wanted to start playing it live, we really believed in that song and we still believe in that song a lot.
You want the song to be at least at the same level of goodness throughout. Whereas with something you're doing live, a song dips and rises and that can actually be worked to the song's benefit.