A Quote by The Rocket Summer
I just like a great song. I just wanted to be this true reflection of what is in my heart and it ended up becoming my life which was kind of surreal, but I do enjoy writing for other people.
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It's always amazing seeing the song-writing process. A song just starts off as just an idea or a story you want to tell. It keeps building and building when you add the lyrics, the instruments, the vocals until you finally reach the finished song other people can enjoy.
During those times like in my early years as a writer I could actually write a song in ten minutes because all of a sudden a song is writing itself, I'm just putting down words. It just seem each line that you put down flows with the other ones. It's like writing a love letter you don't think about it, it's something from the heart.
I just started to understand my craft, what I wanted to do as an artist. It's just a growing process. Figuring out exactly what I wanted to do and obviously I toured a whole bunch. I did a lot of song writing for other people and then just settled back into my zone.
A lot of my fans wanted a kind of 'in your face' song. They wanted a song that exemplifies me overcoming the situation I was in and just that triumphant kind of song. So, I felt like I wanted to go ahead and get that out of both of our systems with 'Good Woman'.
I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was...I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually-usually sometime around 3 in the morning-I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song.
We just met for the first time and David Byrne was like, "Hey, you want to sing on this song?" and I was like, "Yes, I do want to sing on that song." He's the most legendary dude but I wasn't thinking about how he was a legend when rehearsing. I was just thinking, "Wow, this guy really knows what he wants in his music." And that ended up being the vibe, like "Oh, you wanna try that?" "Yeah, that sounds great!"
Writing a song is almost like cheating-writing because you don't have to finish your sentences, you don't have to use any punctuation, no one's going to edit your work. It's so wide open. People just grunt and that's a song. You can kind of do anything.
I really enjoy writing lyrics, I enjoy harmonies and I enjoy hearing the organic side of production because I have to do so much non- organic for a living for other artists, it's just a break for me, for my ears and it confuses people that think my music is supposed to sound like the stuff I do for my day job, but that's just people that don't know me.
I can remember as a college student writing stories and novels, some of which ended up getting published and some that didn't. It was like my head was going to burst - there were so many things I wanted to write all at once. I had so many ideas, jammed up. It was like they just needed permission to come out.
It just seemed that we always ended up at the Rainbow, to the point where they finally just said, why don't you guys go up into this loft where we'll kind of protect people from coming around and, you know, sitting on the tables. And we thought that was a great idea.
With the song 'This Christmas' I wanted to do something that was kind of different. I mean, Donny Hathaway is an amazing artist. So I wanted to bring my flavor to the song so when people over the age of 45 or 50 hear it they'll be like 'OK, he did his thing with that record.' It's like I can appeal to everybody and not just a younger demographic.
I enjoy the song writing process more than anything. It's what I like the most, just sitting in my room with guitar or at the piano or something. Just making something up, something that's not there, that suddenly is there.
Now I'm not going to go, "Oh my God, what are people saying about me?" I had a choice to be a student and not become a model, and becoming a doctor was another one of my dreams. I had a choice between not becoming a singer or becoming a songwriter and writing behind the scenes; nobody would have seen me writing songs for other people. I had the choice of not marrying my man; we could have just been hidden lovers, but I couldn't cope with it. I had these choices to do all these things, so I'm not going to cry over a life which has been really lucky.
I feel like for me the lyric writing really comes from just what's going on in my heart and that's what consumes me; think a lot of our heart is relationships. Not just with boyfriend or girlfriend but all your relationships in your life with other people and our interactions with other humans.
It's so important just to be true to yourself and to own your own character and take responsibility for it, and speak up and say, This isn't right; this isn't me.' It's a great lesson, not just in wrestling but in life. If you're not feeling something that's true to your heart... everybody's gotta be true.
I've always been surprised when a straight guy likes me. It's just been like my whole life has been kinda like that. I definitely felt like when I started writing music, it wasn't writing for a gay audience at all. I was just writing for me. But what I say whenever I get this question is my best friends have always been gay, I've always been, as a person, just accepted by the gay community, and celebrated and had the best nights of my life at gay clubs. Always had a fashion sense usually with drag and I don't know. That's just kind of my people. That's just kind of where I fit in.
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