It was just the next logical step from making succinct pop songs. What do you do after that? You make pop songs that are longer and more epic, that push the envelope. Imagine your favourite song, or something that you play over and over in the car, except that you don't have to start it over as much.
It never really interested me in the past but, for the first time, I wanted to make a pop record. I thought a good way of doing it would be to make songs that didn't really make sense to me as songs; songs that I couldn't just sit down and play in front of someone and then get them to play over it.
Lots of these songs I hadn't performed, but I've always wanted to. These are songs that I wanted to get in my wheelhouse. I sang them over and over and over and over again. Of course, I've fallen in love with them all.
I just know of so many musicians who burn out because they go on tour and they have to play their one-hit song over and over and over and over again. And they are not moved by their own song. And then when you go and see them perform there's something off.
Over the years, I've heard pop artists do some Christmas songs, and I haven't fully cared for them. They weren't the traditional Christmas music that I was raised on and love. Thinking of that, I wanted to make my songs mimic the classic Christmas songs.
The same music is playing on the radio in San Francisco, New York, Washington DC and Annapolis. Everywhere you go there's the same artists and same songs by them, over and over again. At some stations they play the same songs 50 to 60 times a week.
To me, racism is so played out and corny and stupid, especially in music, where you now have Nelly doing songs with Tim McGraw, on the hit single 'Over and Over.' Anyone who thinks about that just needs to get a life.
We need to go to the niceties of approaching the U. N. and let them have a chance to take it over, but we should set some sort of date and begin to move out and leave it to whoever takes over.
So often, I think shows get into these grooves where they know the characters hit, and they just write for it over and over and over again.
You don’t need help to write a song. You just need to get over this experience that bummed you out so bad. The relationship you were in is over, it was over a long time ago, and you need to move on.
Things just evolve. I sort of have no control over what happens with the songs. Sometimes I'm afraid I might wake up one morning with an entire record of polka songs.
I think right now, you've seen these artists pop up over the last decade who've flirted with branching together a lot of different kinds of music. Some of them have been huge, and sold millions of records. And I think over time it's become a little bit of what the industry can be.
We'll see some simplistic players for a while, who'll then get into more complicated things and evolve with their instruments. This is a cycle that happens over and over again in music.
Obviously I got known for some other songs early on, and some of those were rock'n'roll songs. Some of them were melodic pop songs. And I've done lots of different things, as you know, but every so often I get drawn back.
Everybody struggles with get tiring as a musician having to play the same songs over and over again on one level or another. That is why you're cast to write the best songs you can. It keeps it going for you. My old man used to tell me be careful what you write you might have to play it for the rest of your life. That is always a challenge and the best way to remedy it is to write.
It's cool because you don't know how certain songs are going to go over until you play them live. For some reason, "Shivers" gets a huge response. I was not expecting it. When I start singing in the middle of "Baby Get Worse", they go nuts. Just little surprises like that.