As I've gotten older, I've realized the element that sounds like The Gaslight Anthem that's mine is always going to be me. The other three-fourths of it is going to be the other guys. I can't stop doing what I do naturally, whether I'm in The Gaslight Anthem or my own thing.
Gaslight Anthem's thing is its power. It's just like boom and explosions and loud, and play with everything you got.
The Gaslight Anthem is very streamlined. We don't usually use organs and strings and things like that.
If you asked me to make a Gaslight Anthem album on my own, I would say, 'No way, that's crazy.' I would never have been able to do that.
I never got a chance to do Tom Waits or PJ Harvey kind of stuff in the Gaslight Anthem.
We've been doing work outside of the anthem since the beginning. Before the anthem even started, players were involved in these types of social justice issues. The anthem protests or demonstrations just brought eyes and attention to it.
I loved the idea of how all these guys always are stealing other guys' girls and I was like, 'There's no female anthem for a girl stealing another guy's girl,' and that is the coolest thing ever.
I think as I've gotten older, I've realized the more important details. Yes, you're going to make money. Yes, you're going to do all these other things, but playing the game that you love every single day, that's the most important thing to me.
I'm very excited to once again perform the National Anthem at Michigan International Speedway for the GFS Marketplace 400. The fans at MIS have always been great to me and it is always an honor to perform for them, whether it's a concert or the National Anthem.
I had so much backlash because, before in NXT, I used to come out with the Bulgarian national anthem. And people were like, 'Oh, why are you embarrassing the anthem?' How am I embarrassing the anthem? I'm from the freaking country.
I have a few different managers, and one of them hit me up today and was like 'I'm going to set you up with these guys doing beats and such...' I was like cool, as long as I can do what I do. Just because kids are going like this now, I'm not going to do that because I am not 18 years old. I'm not going to rap like I'm in grade three because it's popular. I'm just not going to do that. It's not because I'm being stubborn, and I definitely not that guy that is getting older and does not understand the younger generation.
Guys like to gaslight us, and it's not cool. And it happens so much; it's happened to me in relationships. It's happened to me where I have been cheated on, and I felt so sad and angry, like it wasn't my fault, but that was because the person was gaslighting me into thinking it was my fault.
I got tired of seeing people rush through the national anthem so they could have their popcorn and get to the game. Nobody ever sang the anthem with soul. It was always done clinically and they always stuck to the original. I put feeling into it. I sang it in a soulful manner.
And I respect the anthem. I would never kneel for it. We all come from different walks of life and think differently about the anthem and the flag and what that means.
The gaslight of the film [The Girl On The Train] became something that really needed to be dramatized more than the book did, because it wasn't going to read as strongly on screen.
I sang the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium - at a baseball game - which was crazy; there was, like, 60,000 people there, which is a huge deal in America - singing the National Anthem.
I believe it's not 100 percent right to kneel during the national anthem, because you have to respect what many have done for this nation. I think kneeling prior to the anthem, like the Dallas Cowboys have done, is right.