Heartbreak can definitely give you a deeper sensibility for writing songs. I drew on a lot of heartbreak when I was writing my first album, I didn't mean to but I just did.
We believe being in long-term, deeper relationships with artists is a great strategy, we will be 100% pursuing it. There has never been a debate with Michael Cohl as to whether we should be in the Madonna business or be in long-term relationships, or be in more rights with artists.
You know, I think anybody who has been in relationships has access to heartbreak - I don't think we have to go far to find it, whether we inflicted the heartbreak or whether we were the recipient of it.
I'm a person who's been in a long-term relationship. It's not surprising that a lot of my friends - whether they're in same-sex relationships or not, whether they're married officially or just in a long-term relationship - have really interesting and various stages in their relationship. My life is looking at these friendships and saying, "Wait a minute, isn't this something really interesting? How can I explore this?"
I have been around for a long, long time. I didn't make it 'til I was older. I went through the period when women were not getting signed, particularly if you were writing songs that were lyrically propelled.
I've only been in long-term relationships. I've never really dated myself.
I'm more of a songwriter. I love writing songs. I love writing my songs. It's always been writing for me, and it makes it different when you're writing for yourself.
You need better relationships between the communities and the police, because in some cases, it's not good.But you look at Dallas, where the relationships were really studied, the relationships were really a beautiful thing, and then five police officers were killed one night very violently.
A label is like a bank with all these really important relationships, and maybe an aesthetic or a point of view. But if you only want to release two songs, you don't need the guy who can talk to all the retailers, because they're not going to stock two songs.
In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science - really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.
I know a lot of people that have been in long-term relationships where cheating has happened, and their marriages and their relationships are actually stronger because it was a mirror that reflected back on a problem that was happening. It's hard.
There are two things that I get a lot of pleasure from in my life, and that is, doing what I know how to do well - that really makes me happy. The other one, and probably an equal pleasure, is finding out how I can be helpful and then really being helpful.
I started writing songs at eight. Heartbreak songs - don't ask me why. It was the stuff I used to hear, so I imitated it. I used to write songs about guys cheating. Could you imagine!
If I give myself a chore, for instance, when I was writing the songs for Shameless, I said to myself, Now, every day for 90 days you have to write a song; good, bad or indifferent. So that was really helpful.
I actually had a bunch of songs that I worked on with Jamey Jasta from Hatebreed, but they were too heavy for me because my voice sounds good when I sing clean. It sounds good dirty too, but when I hear my voice sing really clean, that's a special sound.
I had basically been shelved by the record label for two years and I was writing songs every day. I made two albums that just never came out, and that was just a really big knock to my confidence, because everything I sent seemed like it just wasn't good enough.