A Quote by Eddie Van Halen
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let's put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don't.
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I like to write pop songs and the stuff I write is fairly poppy, so I thought maybe my lot in life was to write pop songs for people. It never felt right writing songs for other people to sing, though.
Sometimes strange and wonderful things will pop into my head. And sometimes I will see something in the world that is the beginning of a story. I always have a notebook with me so that I can write down what I see and hear.
I could be inspired by something I see or something I hear and write down or send to a friend or a writer or whether I have instrumental tracks or just a couple chords recorded on my phone. If I have a couple sessions set, I'll go into the studio with the people I'm lucky enough to call my friends because I feel like I can talk to them and then suddenly our conversations turn into these songs you hear on the radio. I still don't understand how it happens but I talk about my experiences and my situations and everything and then they turn into these amazing pop songs.
I'm usually way more pleased with the stuff that just kinda happens by accident and is no way a pop song. But sometimes the easiest thing for me to write is pop songs.
Sometimes I prefer when I can hear other people conduct my music so I can sit out and actually hear it. When you are in the middle of it, sometimes it's a little bit hard to hear and get the whole effect.
We kind of write pop songs, but we don't fit in the pop world. We're really bad at being pop stars and walking down red carpets. We've got our own little bubble, which we really like. We've learned to really like that.
I've always kind of been a little skeptical about bands that won't play their hits. That's really arrogant to me as a music fan. I do want to hear obscure songs, but like most people, I want to hear the hits, so we always play them.
A lot of the hardcore fans wanna hear the deep cuts - songs like 'Orion' or maybe like a 'Disposable Heroes' - you know, songs that we don't play all the time - and then, of course, they wanna hear 'Sandman' and 'Nothing Else Matters' and some of the hits.
Well I mean I just sit at the piano and maybe figure out some harmony or melody or both. Sometimes you can hear it in your head. Sometimes you don't always have to write it down. You just write it down so you can remember it.
Often for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, "I could sing that song. I've got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs; it is actually important to do songs they're familiar with. Also, I love those songs. In a way, I think I've changed people's perceptions of what a cabaret show like this could be.
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.
I was lucky enough to grow up in an era when radio was less formatted. It was really special. You could hear a jazz song then a pop song then a show tune then some jazz. Basically, whatever the DJ felt like playing, he would play. He was educating you and exposing you to things you would never hear otherwise.
Sometimes the songs just come to me. I don't sit down to write like you'd sit down to make a pair of boots.
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.
I think people always have - not just journalists who help their careers, I think all people struggle with this idea that a female pop artist can write all her songs. Even I do it sometimes, you see a really good female pop artist and you're like, 'I wonder if she writes her songs.' That's never really my first initial reaction to a male popstar.
I don't see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear 'pop,' you're like, 'Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,' and I feel like, 'Uh-uh. That's not me.'
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