A Quote by Nate Ruess
Lately I've been falling asleep listening to 'Common One' by Van Morrison, specifically the song 'Summertime in England.' It's 15 minutes long, so to make it through the entire song is a real task unto itself, but Van has that emotional payoff that makes even his most tiresome songs more powerful than most people's entire catalog.
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I don't know much about contemporary music. I do have an iPod but I listen to a lot of old blues. I listen to John Lee Hooker and Elmore James. I have been listening to them for years. I was obsessed with Van Morrison for years. I went to see him recently where he performed Astral Weeks. I just spent the entire night crying, but I was really obsessed with Van Morrison.
You can make a hit song in 15 minutes. I don't know about someone else's song, but songs that people like of mine, I've created in 15 minutes or less.
I'd say it ["I Can't Drive 55"] has probably been the most successful song I've ever been involved with, including any Van Halen songs.
An audience will let you know if a song communicates. If you see them kind of falling asleep during the song, or if they clap at the end of a song, then they're telling you something about the song. But you can have a good song that doesn't communicate. Perhaps that isn't a song that you can sing to people; perhaps that's a song that you sing to yourself. And some songs are maybe for a small audience, and some songs are for a wide audience. But the audience will let you know pretty quickly.
A song can be a song where somebody thinks you're crazy. A song that gets released has got to be something that everyone can relate to. Most of the songs that I keep are un-relateable for most people - some of the music I make only for myself and the homies.
I think the emotion that song carries makes it good. Because you have to produce around something - an emotional attachment and a feeling. The melody itself has a feeling in it. The keys, the tones, frequency, sonics, all of those have feelings in it. Like, it's the ghost within, the music itself. That's what makes the song even have a possibility of being great. The emotional connection. Because if you don't have that, I don't think you really have a song.
To me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that's less divisive. Even if songs aren't overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic.
I think 'Lovin' Feelin' was probably one of the most - probably in '64 and '65, one of the more dramatic love songs for these kids to grab hold of. I mean, they had been listening to, you know, kind of cute songs, and 'Lovin' Feelin' was just a strong, powerful song.
I think there are shades of political songs; some are more subtle and can be more effective for being subtle, for being more metaphorical. I've written a lot of songs like that, where it's not really clear if it's a war song or a relationship song. The metaphor can be the most powerful thing of all, but sometimes you have to speak more clearly to more people, and I think this is one of those times.
Rip Van Winkle would be the ideal stock market investor: Rip could invest in the market before his nap and when he woke up 20 years later, he'd be happy. He would have been asleep through all the ups and downs in between. But few investors resemble Mr. Van Winkle. The more often an investor counts his money - or looks at the value of his mutual funds in the newspaper - the lower his risk tolerance.
I started singing with the Amboy Dukes in '87. I sang 'Oh Baby Please Don't Go,' the old Van Morrison song by Joey Smith. I started singing more from then on.
I don't have one song that sounds like another one in my entire catalog.
Growing up in New Orleans, when you're in seventh and eighth grade, and you're into music, and you're a dorky dude, you know, you listen to the entire Rush catalog and the entire Zeppelin catalog, and you go through these, like, phases of classic rock.
Revising a screenplay is much more frustrating than revising a song because you have to read through the entire work again while you are changing stuff. It is a lot easier to edit a song.
I have the most eclectic music taste out there. I can be listening to an indie pop song just as easily as I could be listening to a Carly Simon song from the '70s to a country song.
The Hillary team is driving around in a van. Sometimes people get those gag bumper stickers put on their van. Hillary has one on her van, and it says, 'If this van's rockin', I'm deleting emails.'
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