A Quote by Rico Love
A song is a song and a hit record can change a life.
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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 don't ever have the pressure of making a hit, because I've never had a hit song, per se. The closest thing to a hit song was 'Shiraz,' and it's not your prototypical hit song, with a catchy hook and all this other stuff.
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.
When you're like, 'Yo, we gotta write a hit song, we need a hit song right now,' that never works. Every time that happens, I never write a hit song.
You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.
The first song I learned on the guitar was a Kenny Chesney song called 'What I Need to Do'; it was just an easy song to play... and it was really cool to see that come full-circle a few years later and have him record a song that I was part of.
Here's the way the licensing works ... If you write a song, nobody can record your song before you do without your permission. But, once the song is recorded, they can get what's called a 'compulsory license', and they can record the tune, but they have to pay you royalties.
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 have this idealistic and maybe naive thought that almost any song can be anything. If you record one song today, it would maybe be exciting and cool. But I could record the same song next week and it would be something completely different.
All the carbon copies, the stuff that the industry puts together, it's not selling if you pay attention and look at the charts. The stuff that they put together, these hits that just go out, it doesn't sell. It doesn't have a core fan base of fans that dedicatedly watch their life. It's just a song, another song, another hit song, a one-hit wonder. It doesn't sell. It doesn't last.
But once you've made a song and you put it out there, you don't own it anymore. The public own it. It's their song. It might be their song that they wake up to, or their song they have a shower to, or their song that they drive home to or their song they cry to, scream to, have babies to, have weddings to - like, it isn't your song anymore.
A Song of the good green grass! A song no more of the city streets; A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields. A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
When I was growing up, you would put on a KISS record or a UFO or Aerosmith record and listen to it from the first song through the last song. It's been so long since a band has put out a record like that.
I am a firm believer in playing the type of music that compliments the song the best. If it's a folk song make it sound like one. If it's a rock song make it sound like one, if it's a rap song take it off the record.
I had been DJing a dance night in Brooklyn and witnessed the response people had to "The Devil's Dancers" - Oppenheimer's one hit song. All these young people were dancing to this amazing song, completely unaware of whether it was current or not. It was from 1982, but sounded very current. It made sense that a physical record should exist for this song again. It seemed the obvious choice to represent what Minimal Wave was going to be.
Listen to the Beatles' 'Things We Said Today.' Ringo Starr does not play a fill in the entire song. It doesn't need it. 'A Day In the Life' has gorgeous fills, but there, the song needs it. When I play on any record, I'm striving to get where Ringo is. You play what doesn't take you out of the song.
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