A Quote by Clay Aiken
I had been told by a number of people that if you get half of what you want on your first album, you're doing really well. Pretty much every single thing they had was something that I liked. There were maybe one or two songs I didn't like, and they were taken off the album quickly.
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Well, Led Zeppelin IV! That's it really. I'll tell you why the album had no title - because we were so fed up with the reactions to the third album, that people couldn't understand why that record wasn't a direct continuation of the second album. And then people said we were a hype and all, which was the furthest thing from what we were. So we just said, `let's put out an album with no title at all!' That way, either people like it or they don't... but we still got bad reviews!
I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.
When I wrote those first songs for the Truckers, songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day,' those were strong songs, very strong songs. But had I been in the position of writing an entire album at that point in time, I don't think the whole album would have been of that kind of quality.
We had a nightmare on our first album, and went through two producers. I decided, on the second album, to take the money that we were supposed to use for pre-production, and we went into a studio and cut the album with no producer. We finished the whole thing without telling the record company.
You think of your first album, when we had no clue what we were doing, we had no clue if people were going to like it or not, we did it because we love it.
As of right this second my main focus is my new album, it'll be out probably towards the summertime, predominately R&B this time. I had a little stint with the dance music and all of that, which I had a good time with- and I love the audience, I love them for accepting me doing it -but I had to go home on this one. Had to take it back to my roots, and not to say that there won't be one, maybe two songs on there that the dance crowd can get into, but the majority, the girth of the album, will be R&B.
Obviously yeah, but our first album took us five years to put together, to get signed and to put it out, we had a lot of time to think about what we were doing. Black Sunday was like a whirl wind, we had to rush back to the studio after touring, but the last album we had a little longer, what like eight months?
All the songs that were written for that album are just all our first sophomore songs. So they're all from real life. Very sweet and very innocent. I think the theme of the album probably was just that it was our first record. ... Back when we were first making records, you didn't just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing.
I've been through a lot, both personally and professionally, and the album that I started to record two and a half years ago is a different album from the one that exists today. I even changed the album title. First it was 'All I Want is Everything,' and now it's 'Jumping Trains.'
I'd had my whole life to write my first album. I had my No. 1 and my third single out, and they go, 'Hey, guess what? We need to start recording the next one.' I'm like, 'Uh oh, I got to write another album. Well, how am I gonna write 'Should've Been a Cowboy' and 'Ain't Worth Missing' and all that again?' It took me forever to write the first one.
A lot of new artists sign their deal and then go into a development stage for a year or two or sometimes never get out of it. For me, because I had been a working songwriter in town, I had a collection of songs that I was ready to make into an album. At the time, I didn't realize it was becoming an album, but it was.
A really humbling experience that we've had was touring on Post-Nothing, was having people come up to us and tell that story about Post-Nothing. Especially as the tour went on, people saying, "I listened to your album when it first came out and I listened to it every day for the summer of 2009. That was my album for that summer; that was my album for this time in my life." When somebody tells you that, it's a pretty amazing feeling, and very humbling.
When I finally stopped [singing], he had been saying, like, the last day or so, he'd been saying, now, I think we should put this one in the album. So without him saying I want to record you and release an album, he kept - he started saying, let's put this one in the album. So the album, this big question, you know, began to take form, take shape. And Rick [Rubin] and I would weed out the songs.
I read the reviews sometimes, but I don't let it really affect the next album because, for me, when I approach an album, it's usually coming to me pretty naturally. It's not like I set out, like, "Okay, I'm going to write an album this month." It's more like I'm just always writing songs and eventually I start to realize that a group of songs sort of fits together, and I go from there in putting together the album and themes and artwork and things like that.
On my first album nobody asked me for a lot of advice. It was a producer's album. We were sent the same type songs with stock melodies. It was my first album and I was happy to do about anything they'd ask me.
I'm really proud of the album. It's something I always wanted to do but I had to wait until I was ready. Shakespeare is a culmination of eight years of stand up experience and joke writing. I recorded two shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York. The crowds were great and that's what really makes an album.
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