Sometimes I write songs that just come out in a pop format because I grew up on melody and these amazing artists during the 80s. It's my tradition and it's something that I can't really control.
I am an old-school guitar player. I'm not an '80s-'90s sort of shredder who plays a million notes a minute. I am way more '60s-'70s kind of style, and I write very '60s-'70s.
I like to write pop songs and the stuff I write is fairly poppy, so I thought maybe my lot in life was to write pop songs for people. It never felt right writing songs for other people to sing, though.
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers.
Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let's put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don't.
I have so many songs, it's ridiculous. I love so many different types of music and tend to write all over the map, style-wise. R&B, rock 'n' roll, screamers, pop, good-time songs.
I'm usually way more pleased with the stuff that just kinda happens by accident and is no way a pop song. But sometimes the easiest thing for me to write is pop songs.
I love nostalgic pop music. The '80s especially, to me, is the greatest era of songs. I just love the '80s so much.
When I began to cover songs for YouTube, they all tended to be in the super pop-genre.. as in, smash-hit songs. My writing process was heavily influenced by this - I went from a more heavy punk rock style to straight up sugary-sweet pop.
The songs that I'm able to write are the songs I'm able to write, whatever they may be. The path I've cut for myself is pop music - love-y pop music. That's what I enjoy doing. And I don't think I'm going to get sick of it anytime soon.
I love A Day to Remember. They really had that style down of doing heavy songs mixed with pop songs when nobody was doing that style of music.
Throughout all of the changes that have happened in my life, one of the priorities I've had is to never change the way I write songs and the reasons I write songs. I write songs to help me understand life a little more. I write songs to get past things that cause me pain. And I write songs because sometimes life makes more sense to me when it's being sung in a chorus, and when I can write it in a verse.
You can only write so many pop songs before they all sound the same. I got to a point where something overtly melodic and straightforward sounded sort of cheesy to me. Pop songs seemed too manufactured.
The Pandoras began as a '60s punk group. Then they went pop, then metal. When they went metal, I quit because I hate heavy metal music and I wanted to write my own songs.
I think people always have - not just journalists who help their careers, I think all people struggle with this idea that a female pop artist can write all her songs. Even I do it sometimes, you see a really good female pop artist and you're like, 'I wonder if she writes her songs.' That's never really my first initial reaction to a male popstar.
In the little rural town I grew up in, I missed out on the pop music of the time, the '80s, and now enjoy in retrospect. It's as an adult that I've opened it up to dance, hip-hop, R&B, and even big pop songs.