A Quote by Jordin Sparks
'Battlefield' was one of those slow-building songs, the way 'Tattoo' was. It was kind of a word-of-mouth hit. The more people heard it, the more they started requesting it on the radio.
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When we were younger and first starting out in Australia, we found that we sold more records by word of mouth because we were playing the bars, clubs, and small places and building a following. And as we got bigger, we still relied a lot on word of mouth.
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.
Listen- my relationship with radio on a personal level is nothing but a one way love-a-thon... I love radio, I grew up on radio. That's where I heard Buddy Holly, that's where I heard Chuck Berry. I couldn't believe it the first time I heard one of my records on the radio, and I STILL love hearing anything I'm involved with on radio, and some of my best friends were from radio. But we were on different sides of that argument, there's no question about that.
I was invited to L.A. when I was 16 for a weekend-long songwriting session by a writer I had met through my voice teacher in Pittsburgh. My first hit, 'Hide Away,' was one of the songs written during those sessions. It was played for a radio rep who then started a new label; the song got a pretty organic start at radio and then took off.
I'm definitely seeing more and more new people at shows, which is exciting. It's nice for me, because it's a fresh start. I don't feel as obligated to play old favorite songs - it feels like I'm free to try new things because I'm meeting people for the first time. But there's a lot of people who are showing up and they know all the words to the first album and they're requesting songs from the second album.
The first songs I learned were 'It Takes a Worried Man' and Woody Guthrie's 'Grand Coulee Dam,' 'Rock Island Line' - those kind of American folk songs that were probably on the edge of blues. After that was Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry songs. And then I heard Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed and Big Bill Broonzy on the radio.
When I first organized the King Cole Trio back in 1937, we were strictly what you would call an instrumental group. To break the monotony, I would sing a few songs here and there between the playing. I sang things I had known over the years. I wasn't trying to give it any special treatment, just singing. I noticed thereafter people started requesting more singing, and it was just one of those things.
Now, there is no business like show business, and there is no publicity like word of mouth. What is word of mouth, you may ask? Well, word of mouth is gold to Hollywood bigwigs, and it equates to box office bonanzas and hit TV shows.
I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they're the guy who wrote that. You've got to be careful; if you don't want that to happen, don't write those songs.
I had my first band. it was kind of a progressive metal band kind of thing. I just started writing songs that required more and more challenging vocals, and I just did them. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? So I just sort of did what I had to do to make the songs sound the way I wanted them to.
I was mugged when I was 12. I had a portable radio, and I ran into this building and these two guys came in and hit me, busted me up and took the radio. After that I was very paranoid and I started taking kung fu and karate. But I didn't want to fight.
There are some commercial artists that have number one after number one, and you go to their show, and the show's one-note. Yeah, they're all hit songs. But there's no emotion, because they're the same kind of hit songs, because they're what works at radio. That kills live shows for me.
I'm really terrible at math, so I won't even attempt to do ratios and percentages, but all I know is that there's a lot of new songs that no-one has heard yet, and that there's a lot of old songs that some very, very super hardcore fans have heard for sure - there are people that have been coming and seeing me play in bars in like 2002, and there are songs that those people heard.
It's cool to hear my songs on the radio. But for me, that's just a way to get more people to have the option of choosing my music.
We've been really lucky. We've gotten a lot of airplay over the years. I guess people keep requesting our songs on the radio, because Lord knows I don't do a whole lot to promote myself.
I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.
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