I don't have a set working style. Some lyrics come really slow, others come in 10 minutes while I'm watching basketball. They're always a surprise to me.
I try not to agonize over my lyrics, though, because that can come across in them. Some lyrics come more easily than others and some you have to spend a lot of time on, but I think you have to watch that you don't take the life out of them by worrying too much.
There's something wrong - the performance, the weather, the set design, the lighting. Something is not working. And so you say, "Give me 10 minutes." When you're first directing, you're terrified. But when you've been in that situation enough times, you know that under pressure, it will come to you.
What is style? It is an effortless confidence in being yourself, it is a way of putting yourself together according to your mood and what you want to project. Personal style appears to come naturally for some, but for others it can take a while to find it!
It's rare that I'll write lyrics first. If I come up with some good lyrics, I'll write them down and try to use them later. If I come up with a song title, sometimes I'll write a song based on that. Sometimes, I'll make a whole band out of it. I don't really have a process, per se. I just keep going and going and going. Every free minute I have I'm working.
Some of our struggles involve making decisions, while others are a result of the decisions we have made. Some of our struggles result from choices others make that affect our lives. We cannot always control everything that happens to us in this life, but we can control how we respond. Many struggles come as problems and pressures that sometimes cause pain. Others come as temptations, trials, and tribulations.
If I come on for 10 minutes and play well, I can't go home and tell everyone, 'I played a great 10 minutes.' I have to play the full 90.
I like to do a movie, to be on it 8, 10 weeks. It evolves as you're working on it. Little things come to you every day. It's a slow process, and when you have to pack it into a short period of time, which you do for television, the experience is not one that I cherish. So if it's going to be television, it's really got to be the right thing.
Whenever there's a red carpet event coming up my trainer in LA that I see, I always come to her like three days before and go, 'Can you make me really thin in three days?' She's always like, 'If you come to me consistently all throughout the year, then yes I can. When you come to me with three days and ask to lose 10 pounds it's just not going to happen.' I'm like, 'Do your best. Please. Make me skinny.'
Come away with in the night
Come away with me
And I will sing you a song
Come away with me on a bus
Come away where they can't tempt us
With there lies
I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows
Knee-high
So won't you try to come
Come away with me and we'll kiss
On a mountain top
Come away with me
And I'll never stop loving you
And I want to wake up with the rain
Falling on a tin roof
While I'm safe there in your arms
So all I ask is for you
To come away with me in the night
Come away with me.
A Winner's Blueprint for Achievement BELIEVE while others are doubting. PLAN while others are playing. STUDY while others are sleeping. DECIDE while others are delaying. PREPARE while others are daydreaming. BEGIN while others are procrastinating. WORK while others are wishing. SAVE while others are wasting. LISTEN while others are talking. SMILE while others are frowning. COMMEND while others are criticizing. PERSIST while others are quitting.
I'm particularly attuned to lyrics, and very often a bad set of lyrics will ruin a song for me, while my friends will be just grooving on the music. I don't mean that it has to be about anything in particular, but there has to be some art applied to it, simple or otherwise.
Basketball has always and will always come first to me but it's also given me the chance to do really fun things and work with really fun people and its something I'm lucky to have.
So my biggest fun has been watching my daughters grow up. Now, unfortunately they're hitting the age where they still love me, but they think I'm completely boring. And so they'll come in, pat me on the head, talk to me for 10 minutes, and then they're gone all weekend. Right? They break my heart! So now I've got to start thinking, Well what's going to replace that fun?
Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?'
I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last. Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.
I'm not a standup. I don't really have jokes. I don't have 10 minutes. It took a while for me to realize this.