Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.
There is always this thing of will you get too old for your part? But people are playing a lot younger than they actually are in real life. I don't think it's as big an issue as a lot of people are making it out to be.
It was a song I wrote for my wife as a present, never intending for it to be a Styx song. 'Babe' was a demo. The demo became the hit record, including all the background vocals, which were done by me.
I record stuff all the time, like little vocal things. I write random things down... Sometimes I just get things stuck in my head and I record them, and that actually becomes a song quite a lot of the time.
Actually think anybody ever approaches writing any song, I think the song approaches them, truth be told. Usually what happens is that a song arrives and afterwards you say that "I wrote the song," and it's not actually true; they find you, they write themselves.
I always write after I think for quite a long time, so the actual writing time is rather short. I think a lot of the work gets done when you have something on your mind while you're doing many other things.
I tend to like to write a song and then think about it for a while. I record a demo of it and then put it away and wait until I've gotten more thoughts on it or get sure exactly how to approach it.
But I think writing should be a bit of a struggle. We're not writing things that are going to change the world in big ways. We're writing things that might make people think about people a little bit, but we're not that important. I think a lot of writers think we are incredibly important. I don't feel like that about my fiction. I feel like it's quite a selfish thing at heart. I want to tell a story. I want someone to listen to me. And I love that, but I don't think I deserve the moon on a stick because I do that.
I wrote a song on the record called 'Flawed Design' and it's basically looking at that, and it was just exploring how everybody obviously has flaws. I think to embrace those flaws - enjoy them, embrace them - and actually be a real person is something that a lot of people struggle with, myself included.
I think, quite often, filmmakers kind of think so much about what the franchise will be and sometimes can neglect to put their efforts into the movie that they are actually making.
I never want to record something that I'm not proud of just because I think it might be a big hit. There's no positive about that because if you record a song you hate and it's a big hit, then you're singing a song every night that you hate. And if you record a song that you hate and it isn't a hit, then you sold out for no reason.
I think I was blessed with this talent for a reason. No one told me how to write a song, but I'm just good at it, you know. There are a lot of other things in my life that I'm not so good at, but writing a song is not one of them.
I actually produced other people's vocals for a long time when I first signed my publishing deal and I had just sort of decided that I only wanted to be a writer. I would be in all of these writing sessions, and a lot of times my publisher would say, "You should get a demo singer to sing it because then it doesn't identify as a Solange song."
The name Downhere comes from a song I wrote after a friend of mine died in college, and it was kind of the first time I was dealing with loss and, you know, real mortality, and it was a song of how down here on Earth, we don't have the big picture.
I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.
I think often in film we limit our imaginations a little - well, quite a lot, actually things get quite formulaic.
I think often in film we limit our imaginations a little - well, quite a lot, actually... things get quite formulaic.