A Quote by Ty Stone
I've always written songs from a sad place. I can't think of one good song that I have written in a happy place. I was saying I was kinda bummed because I've been sorta chasing the girl I've been in love with for years and years and we're finally together now, and I'm like super happy for months and months and months. And my girlfriend asks, "Why haven't you written a song for me?"And I don't know how to tell her "Because it's just too good."
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Most people who ask me what's my favorite song, expect that it's 'Midnight Train' or 'Neither One of Us.' But actually, it's always kinda been 'The Need to Be' because of what it says. I love the way that song was written, I love the melody, I love everything about it.
A good song gathers the years in. It's why you can sing it with such conviction 40 years after it's been written.
I would never sit and write a song in front of anyone, because you're so vulnerable. I don't know at what point in the process that it becomes acceptable to pass them on. When a song wants to be written, it will be written. When it does come, I will very rarely go back and edit lyrics. I'm quite a rational human being, and the only part of my life that I can't rationalise, or can't make sense of, is how a song gets written or why.
Some songs take months to get right, but 'Let Her Go' was so easy. I was no more pleased with it than any other song I'd written.
'Free Mind' was a song written over a couple of years. It was pretty much three different songs that I couldn't figure out how to put together - until one day, when I was in the studio, it kind of just fell into place.
The thing is, the way we write is all jams and bits and pieces that get pieced together and sometimes things are written with intentions of being a song, and then all of a sudden the main riff of this song, six months later turns into a verse or a chorus of another song.
I like movies. I've written screenplays as a sort of procrastination thing for me. Like I'll work for a couple months on this idea that's been kicking around and then like 30 pages in I'll just go try a novel because it's a lot easier. That's what I know. So why am I killing myself?
I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.
My feeling is that, and I've been writing about my family over the years, although it might make them feel uncomfortable, people generally like to be written about. If I've written a song about the family, they enjoy being mentioned in the songs. Nobody's confronted me and said 'don't write any songs about me.
All you gotta do is think of the song in your head. And it doesn't matter whether you can play it or not, you can get somebody to play it. With songs I've written, there's a song called "The Statue", which I can't play. There are songs that I've written that I've actually just hummed on - there's a song on one of the albums they have there on the Internet called "My Love Was True" and it's almost operatic. I can't play it. But I can sing it.
I've been living in Portland for five months and I'm not sure how I feel about it. I probably won't really know for years because that's how it works right? You don't really develop feelings about a place till you've left it. It's like a girl or a dog.
I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.
Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'
Usually, you can live very well for two, three months, then you're in trouble. Every coach, I think, is like this. For two months, you're happy because you have time, and after two months, you miss adrenaline.
I like 'Bewitched' off the first album because it's one of the happiest songs I've ever written and, as any writer will tell you, happy songs are a million times more difficult to write than sad songs.
Those situations were just taking over my entire life. It was fun to write in a way, because it helped me take a really bad situation and a really sad situation and make beautiful songs out of them. When I got half of the song written it was like, "Oh, this is great." It was like the one thing that was making me happy again.
