Whenever the press quits abusing me I know Im in the wrong pew. I dont mind it because when they throw bricks at meIm a pretty good shot myself and I usually throw em back at em.
From all the years that I've been in the business, you know that ballads are what impact. Mid-tempos are great, you can sell some records on 'em, but when it comes down to it, ballads are the meat-and-potatoes on the album.
Yer feelin's is like ras'berry vinegar: if you're skeered to use 'em an' keep on savin' 'em, first thing you know they've done 'vaporated!
You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That's what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.
I know six years is a big break. But I never walked away from music. I never released an album because I wanted to do a different album, something I have never done before.
I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes. I made 'em up myself.
So Chuck and I looked at that and we hacked on em for a while, and eventually we ripped the stuff out of em and put some of it into what was then called en, which was really ed with some em features.
I always want to put out an album when I know what it's going to be about. I don't want to throw in all these random songs and say, 'Okay, that's an album.'
Our first album sold a million copies. Because we had such a big hit on the first album, it's always like, 'You can't top the first album.'
We need to all reach out to our parents and say that we love 'em and care for 'em and make sure that they know that. Because we got a hard world out there.
A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns.
For me there's insecurity when you're releasing an album because you spend all of this time working on that one thing and then once it's done, it's done. After you put it out there to the public you never know which songs are going to work or even if the album is going to work as a whole so there is a little bit of nervousness around predicting what the numbers will be and if it's going to be well-received.
I didn't know how well my first album had done; it was enough to get me to do the second album, which was a continuation of the music I'd worked on and perfected.
My gift was in comedy. I found out I could make jokes. I could tell jokes. I could write them. So over the years, that's what I've done.
What came out of 'Ocean's Twelve' is actually great because you do one 'Ocean's Twelve,' and you're more known around the world than if you did 20 years in the French cinema industry.
I don't want to give too much lugubrious thought to the gravitas of a coherent album. I don't want to develop a life of slavery to a large topic. I want to throw out some singles and that's what I'm doing, and they're not to be done in any other way.