I always been writing songs since I was, like, six. I was listening to Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Laine and people like that. I was just in the backyard writing songs.
I've been writing songs all along, and since moving to Nashville in the late-'80s, I'd begun writing something like 15-20 songs a year, instead of the typical three or four in previous years.
I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them. Finally the Foo Fighters stuff happened when I just went to the studio down the street from my house and recorded some stuff in about five or six days, and all these people wanted to release it as an album. I wanted to release it on my own, with no photos and no names on it.
When I wrote for myself before as an artist, I probably wrote about 15, 20 songs a year. I thought that was a lot. Then, when I first started writing for the people, I wrote, like, 65 songs in a year for two years in a row.
I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them.
There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.
When I was doing 'In the Heights,' I was the co-music supervisor for 'The Electric Company' on PBS, so I was writing songs all day, doing the show, staying up until 3 A. M. Writing more songs, recording demos in the intermission in my dressing room.
It's not the case of turning in a bunch of songs and recording the next month. I think you're looking for songs all year long and you're writing all year long.
I have always struggled with expressing emotion, I used to think I was a very hard person but music has shown me I'm a big softy! Writing songs to me really is like writing a diary, it's very private and very personal. My most emotional songs have been written alone in a locked room, I'm able to express myself there.
I checked the actuarial tables, and the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds. So I decided to eat like a six-year-old.
I've been writing songs since I was like six or seven. I've been writing poetry and short stories and stuff, but my first serious, serious song, I wrote when I was fourteen.
It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.
I clearly remember writing songs [when I was young] and the power that it gave me of feeling like somebody. My whole life changed when I wrote those songs, even before anyone ever heard them. It wasn't a commercial thing.
I've played music since I was six, and I always wrote songs just for myself. I did it for fun, posting songs on Tumblr, Bandcamp, and Soundcloud. I didn't think anyone would notice.
I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane.
I have this theory about us. When we started writing our own songs, we were 17 years old. When you're 17, you write songs for other 17-year-olds. We stopped growing musically when we were 17. We still write songs for 17-year-olds.