I have so much pride and love for the songs of The Smiths. However, I must ask you, if you come across any Smiths CDs, don't buy them, because all the money goes to that wretched drummer.
I've really been studying lyrics, printing out lyrics to songs I love and reading them like a letter.
There are so many different things that lend themselves to what makes a song magical, that go beyond just the lyrics or the composition. But arrangement and production and performance have such huge stakes in what makes that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle moment.
Songs that don't depend on composition depend instead on performance - so the fire has to be there in the playing.
The lyrics are different from Nick Cave songs and lyrics. His songs are very narrative.
The challenges change depending on the song. There are some songs where the lyrics are really a challenge and then there are other songs where the lyrics are there and the music is a challenge. And then you've got rock songs where the challenge is the tightness of the arrangement with the band. The music and the lyrics are there, but it's a challenge to get the arrangement correct. So I wouldn't be able to point to one thing. What the challenge is changes all of the time.
I kinda learned to sing singing to Echo and the Bunnymen songs and Smiths songs: Morrissey would be a big favorite.
The solo years have been more meaningful to the audiences than the Smiths years, but the press in England only write about me in relation to the Smiths era.
A great composition or lyrics no longer decide whether something is good. What matters is, how much has it been seen.
I would say the songs that have different lyrics. I always write the music first, and there's a couple of songs on this box set that have different lyrics from what ended up on the final recording.
My songs are all about celebrating poignant music. While some of them focus on fun and revelry, they are fortunately backed by powerful lyrics. Put together, the lyrics, tune and my voice strive to take the songs to the next level.
I want to write songs with complete sentences. I almos have this obsession with short-changing words. I would never be so pretentious to say that my lyrics are poetry. ... Poems are poems. Song lyrics are for songs.
Since I write the lyrics, I don't want to be pigeonholed into a person who's out there preaching these songs. If you read the lyrics, there isn't a story being set up for you. You have to use your imagination to get the best out of the songs - if you choose to do that.
I know there's bands that might write something that sounds like The Smiths, and they'll go, 'Oh, it sounds like The Smiths, we've got to make it sound not like The Smiths.'
Lyrics is the face of any song. The combination of composition, lyrics and singing is what makes a song a song.
I was always interested in trying to find how different genres would affect the lyrics that I'd written. Salsa is where most of my songs have been recorded, the genre of salsa. It's very frenetic, fast-paced. And I felt that the lyrics sometimes were being lost.