A Quote by Ryan Bingham

I always try to leave songs open for people to interpret in their own ways. — © Ryan Bingham
I always try to leave songs open for people to interpret in their own ways.
There's no way anyone's going to understand my own personal experiences, where the songs came from, because they're mine. But I was very conscious of leaving loads of space in the songs so that people could interpret them with their own memories, feelings, and emotions. I love the process of taking stuff away so that people could finish the songs themselves. I was hoping it'd end up being as universal as possible, even though it comes from the most personal place.
You don't always get lucky enough to have songs that can breathe and shift meaning. But every once in a while you open up a window and something passes through. It's really nice for me when I discover those songs in my catalogue. It's one of the reasons I try not to get too specific about what my songs mean.
It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.
I always try, when I'm singing songs, to interpret them the way that I would've arranged them. I think about the melody first, and then I pull out my guitar and start singing it.
I have - often say to people that you really don't get to decide your own legacy. I mean, what you do is, you try to be your own authentic self. And then people decide how they're going to interpret that and what it means to them.
I'm not like other writers. I'm not hung up on using my own songs. In fact, my sister Bunny always tells me I sing other people's songs better than my own. She says I loosen up and give the songs a different feel.
I listened to Billie Holiday a lot in order to learn to sing. She remains one of the extraordinary jazz singers. But my intent is to become my own voice, to be able to interpret these songs in my own way.
I never leave my computer open. That becomes a big OCD thing. If I see people leaving their laptops open, I always close them.
I'm always going to take an experience and a fire beat and marry it all together with adult melodies. I try to paint, just like Frank Ocean paints with his lyrics. I try in similar ways to paint my life into these songs.
I try to always be open to what the actors want to try. I don't storyboard and try to be intuitive and open on the day of filming.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs.
My own belief is that rather than getting involved in trying to change the reality of social-political things, creators can be involved in and express in different ways and be meaningful in different ways, so for me, it's important to leave messages to people of the future and to be engaged with the people now.
I write for myself; I'm trying to keep myself interested in the music. But at the same time, I want to make the songs relatable in a way; I want to keep melodies pretty simple and the lyrics open-ended so that people could maybe relate them to their own life in different ways. Something for everybody to have a piece of.
I make my songs slightly abstract so that people can interpret them their own way. I think that's a lot more special, so you can hear a song and think, 'I feel exactly that way,' even if it wasn't written for that feeling.
My own personal tastes don't really have an effect on whether song is a parody target or not. But having said that, I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I'm working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life. So I try not to pick songs that I know would drive me crazy.
I just write songs from the heart, and you never know who'll like the songs. I try to make sure that I don't allow anybody's expectation to weigh on me. I have my own expectation of life. I believe in letting people be free.
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