A Quote by M. Ward
I just want the songs to have the staying power as my favorite songs. If you listen to any Hank Williams song, when you're in a good mood, it's going to put you in a better mood. If you happen to be bummed-out, you're going to feel maybe a little more bummed-out and better at the same time. At any time in my life, his music has had meaning and value to me. If a song can shape-shift in that way, that's a sign of success.
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When you finish a song, your first thought is going to be, 'Is this song a hit?' I hate that we think that way, because it kind of takes a little bit of the meaning out of the songs that are being written, but you're definitely going to think, 'Can this song be put on the radio?'
I've had many songs where I've gone, 'Oh, my God, this song is going to be huge!' but it wasn't the right artist, or something just didn't happen. It didn't make the song any worse. It just didn't line up. That does happen.
I can listen to the same song back-to-back for two to three hours straight. I'm not psycho; I swear. There are some songs I won't listen to any more because they are songs that helped me get to emotional places. Even if I hear it, I'll have to walk out of the room or turn it down. It sounds so strange but those things affect me in a certain way.
You're not going to hit it every single time, and that's why, when I record an album, I do probably close to 50 songs. Each song I record has to get better. If it's not better than the last song that I made, it'll usually linger for a couple of months, and then it'll be put on the backburner, and then there'll be another song that I do, and then it often doesn't make it on the album.
I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don't catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there.
I don't go out there and put on any sort of front for people. If I'm in a good mood, I appear in a good mood on TV, and if I'm in a bad mood, I just go out there and look like I'm in a bad mood.
When you're really bummed out, the last thing you want to hear is up-tempo and positive. And it lets you know that you're not alone, that somebody has hurt before. It works the same way with chick songs as it does with political songs. When you hear somebody singing about these things, you know that you're not alone, that somebody else is suspicious of what's going on around us in the world. So you don't feel like you're crazy, and you feel like you might be able to make a difference.
What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.
If and when I do get "down," the last thing on my mind is writing a song. Usually, being bummed just involves lying around on the couch and taking the bad weather personally. I only write songs when I feel good - or at least something approaching "good."
My favorite song to write was a song called "Always" I wrote it about a girl who, at the time, I had feelings for her for a long time but she never really felt the same back. So it's one of my more personal songs and I'm very proud of it.
If someone is sad, they put on a song, or if someone wants to rock out, and they want to get into a good mood, they put on music. Just being able to be a part of something like that I feel like was my ultimate push to do music.
I'd do a song in the studio and it would explain everything I'm going through so perfectly that when I went home and I felt down I could listen to that to make me feel better. It's a documentation of my life. I think it's just important to put it out there.
Like, a song could be really tricky and intricate and be really intellectually stimulating, but I don't think that's the song that that I'm going to throw on 80% of the time. The songs that I really want to listen to are the ones that I can really feel.
Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening.
I just find that with music I've always felt a sort of comfort."Paranoid Android" was the saddest song I'd ever heard in my life, but it felt so good - it was like, "Oh, you understand where I'm coming from." I was at a weird age at the time, in a hardcore band that had no melody, no chance of finding any success, and I was just trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. And that came out and changed my life forever - on an artistic level, and a lyrical level, for sure.
Sometimes, the songs that really affected me were not from the artist catalogue of their music, like the song 'Thunder Road' by Bruce Springsteen. I never got into any of his other music, but that song, to this day, is in my top three lyrical masterpieces of all time.
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