I continue to write songs that are topically related to social, political and economic issues of our time, but I also recognize that onstage, I have a lot of fun and audiences have a lot of fun, so I'm trying to package the messages in music and sounds that are fun to perform and fun to listen to.
I think a lot of my fans are anxious for more than just my singles. They know I'm a dreamer. They know I'm someone who is real spiritual. I love to have fun, and I always have fun songs - songs you can party to. But I also always have songs you can live to, that when you're depressed, it may lift your spirits up.
I wrote all the lyrics on 'Good Vibrations' and most of them in 'Kokomo.' 'Kokomo' was extremely popular and fun to sing - it's probably one of the bigger sing-along songs in our show. But then 'Help Me Rhonda,' 'Surfin' USA' and 'California Girls' and 'I Get Around' and 'Fun, Fun, Fun' are great songs as well.
It's fun to sing sad songs. And it's fun to listen to sad songs. Enjoyable. Satisfying. Something.
I can understand why those bands do it. It can be a hell of a lot of bloody fun. People are allowed to have a bit of fun after the age of 40, and a lot of them do need the money.
It's always fun to do the fight sequences and then to complete them, because some of them are quite complicated - with guns and so on - and there's always things that can go wrong. It's fun to shoot those things because we rehearse them very strenuously. It's fun to shoot them, and fun to know they're finished, that they're in the can so to speak.
I've got a lot of songs about having fun and partying, but it's a lot of work. Sometimes, I make 50 songs and pick out the best 10. I've been in the studio all day, all night, making the beat, writing the raps.
Casting is sometimes like going to a party. You get there and everybody at the party is wonderful. They're funny, they're interesting, and the next time you go to a party, you kind of want those same people there. I do find myself going back to a lot of the same actors I've worked with because it was fun, it was good and I know they can do the job. When we have tight deadlines to cast a project, that's how some decisions are made.
I was immersed in popular songs of the time, of the '30s and '40s. I was writing songs, making fun of the attitudes of those songs, in the musical style of the songs themselves; love songs, folk songs, marches, football.
Most of the time, the songs have jokes in them, little sarcastic things, or purposely kitsch or something. So that's going along with a story, like I do in life, just talking to myself and making fun of stuff and laughing at stuff that's serious. And sometimes it's a good idea to put the laughing into the songs. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's all right just to be serious. But most of the songs have some kind of joke in them.
At first, being a storyteller, it was fun to dress up and fun to sing songs and pretend to be very dramatic - all of that stuff was just fun early on.
I very rarely listen to music in my car - a lot of people make fun of me for it. But sometimes I listen to music on YouTube. I'm like a teenager.
I love playing special teams. It's fun, it's like 'Braveheart' sometimes but it's a lot of fun.
We call them impact songs, and people buy impact songs. But you just never know what those songs are going to be. One of those songs that really went through the roof for us was 'Big Green Tractor,' which I thought was kind of a fun little ditty song that I never in a million years thought would be as big as it was. But it was.
I try to have fun. Sometimes I have more fun, sometimes I have less fun. But overall I still believe that this team can do it without me and when I'll be ready, I'll be ready.
When you're younger you have a lot of ideas and you're probably more insecure, all those things. I work with young actors now and I see their insecurities and I make fun of them. I don't make fun of them but I make them laugh, because I know what they're going through. When you get older you think 'It's only a movie after all, it's not brain surgery.'