A Quote by Dan Bejar
It never really interested me in the past but, for the first time, I wanted to make a pop record. I thought a good way of doing it would be to make songs that didn't really make sense to me as songs; songs that I couldn't just sit down and play in front of someone and then get them to play over it.
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I wanted to try to make songs that worked as songs, not just as productions. People wanted me to do a solo acoustic session, they were like "Can you play song on the piano?" and I was like "Not really. It doesn't really work." I wanted to write songs that would work in a variation of instrumentation.
I don't do filler songs. I don't get them. They don't make any sense to me. Why would I literally waste my time on a song that doesn't hold up to the same standards as the other songs on the album? I won't play it live.
I also don't like to make really big records, because I feel then that the songs don't get enough space to be themselves, so I would never want to make a record that's like seventeen songs.
I'd always wanted to do an R&B and soul record; a friend with a studio asked to come by and record a couple of songs, maybe just make a 45. Then the songs started to pour out, and pretty soon we had eight or 10 songs down.
I made songs really for myself - I didn't ever expect to put it out there and make this a record for mass consumption, this was really just a way for me to get out of my own situation and reclaim that part of myself - so when making the songs, I wanted a testament to what I'd gone through, I wanted a snapshot of those moments.
It was just the next logical step from making succinct pop songs. What do you do after that? You make pop songs that are longer and more epic, that push the envelope. Imagine your favourite song, or something that you play over and over in the car, except that you don't have to start it over as much.
I love good momentum. It makes everybody happy and in this time that we're living in, especially musically speaking, if you can make a record that has more than 4 or 5 songs deep and it has a good variety of songs. You don't frontload it with those first couple of songs. You continue the record taking the listener on a journey, musically speaking. I think you've really got something there.
My first songs, I would just record them on this little tape recorder, and then I didn't start recording songs I really liked until my friend gave me a 4-track (recorder) and that's when my ideas really started coming together.
I first thought maybe I'd do a banjo presentation record, where I'd play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.
I really wanted to get that dynamic on the record onto people and let them know it wasn't just a simple strumming along the guitar type of thing without ramming it down their throats so I kind of went the opposite way and sang some of the songs more quietly which allowed for the louder parts to sound as though there were more. It was the only way singing those songs made sense to me.
Over the years, I've heard pop artists do some Christmas songs, and I haven't fully cared for them. They weren't the traditional Christmas music that I was raised on and love. Thinking of that, I wanted to make my songs mimic the classic Christmas songs.
I write songs for myself, songs come out of me, I get enjoyment out of it. Basically, that's it - I get enjoyment out of my songs, I know they're good songs, and know that the people around me who I respect are all getting up on these tunes, and the feedback is really good, so that's it. There are people who will receive them, and don't receive them. Not in a spiritual sense, but in a commercial sense - do these songs treat people, and so far they're working.
In the past, I've written my songs and then asked friends if they could record the vocals. I didn't want to use my own voice, because other people have much better voices. I was hearing the music with a voice that I don't have. It was a case of pulling whatever resources I had to get the sound I wanted, but that doesn't take anything away from the authorship. They are songs written by me that sound the way I want them to sound. Whether it's my voice or someone else's doesn't make a difference to the music.
It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.
In the past, we never really had that kind of spontaneity on record. When you start touring, you play songs in a certain way and then I start to feel like it's tough to really get lost in my playing.
Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.
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