Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm writing all the time. And as the songs begin to coalesce, I'm not doing anything else but writing. I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is.
I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.
The name is something we thought about for a long time, and we wanted it to be a girl's name, but we didn't want it to be 'the Jesses,' ... We were very conscious of not wanting to make it a twin thing, because we think that's really tacky.
I don't write about anything I don't want to write about. I like to think I could write about anything pretty much that I chose to. I have been asked to write songs about specific things, and I've always been able to come up with the goods.
I love the idea that I planned my career. I did not. It started out by getting invitations from artists that I really love and respect, to share a stage... I've been very lucky in that I haven't had to create a five-year plan. It's evolved.
There's no law that says that you cannot be a spiritual person and a sexual person. In fact, if you have the right consciousness, sex is like a prayer. It can be a divine experience. So why do they have to be disassociated with one another?
Catholicism is a really mean religion, and it's incredibly hypocritical. But it plays a role in my life 'cause you can't really get a lot of things out of your head, such as what Jesus Christ looks like and that divorce is a horrible thing.
And then, going to high school, I saw how popular girls had to behave to get the boys. I knew I couldn't fit into that. So I decided to do the opposite. I refused to wear makeup, to have a hairstyle. I refused to shave. I had hairy armpits.
You have to have a plan. Everything has to be planned. For me, I start with the title of my album, before I even start with the songs. I write down different things that I want album to say, and then the songs come from the different words.
...I would be a liar and my fans would hate me if I said to them, 'Oh, we're perfect and everything is great.' We have situations just like everyone else. We're not out in public trying to kill each other, but it's real. We love each other.
You can write a song about a girl or you can write a song about walking down the shops, and it's fine. I just try and do something as meaningful as I can without trying to be a pretentious loser because it's genuinely just how I see things.
I did my first show when I was five and I was the King of the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The kids theater company, I was the youngest one, so there wasnt a part for me, so they made me the king of the Oompa Loompas.
Holding on to love is not wrong, but you need to learn to hold it lightly, caressingly. Let it fly when it wants. When it's allowed to be free, love is what makes life alive, joyful, and new. As long as love is in my heart, it's everywhere.
I know I get cold, cause I can't leave things well alone. Understand I'm accident prone. Me, I get free every night the moon is mine. But when the morning comes don't say you love me, don't say you need me. I really don't think that's fair.
I picked up 'The Hunger Games' thinking it was written at my regressed reading level. I've spent hours reading it, and I'm not even halfway through. Our bass player, whose name is also Nate, ended up reading all three novels and loved them.
If I could ever be on a Missy Elliott record, I could then die. Missy Elliott, Mary J. Blige - I love hearing them interviewed, I love the way they talk about their art. They're very self-assured, they're funny, they're inviting. I love it.
I tell her all the time I'd gladly retire and hang out with the kids and clean the house. I want to have a good life and great family, and from a professional standpoint I want to be successful, but it's not the most important thing at all.
I'm very interested in religion and different religions, and I know quite a lot about it. I love gospel music, and I love going to churches, but the one drawback is that I don't actually believe in God. And it is quite a handicap, you know.
I come from Paisley, the same town as David Sneddon, who won 'Fame Academy.' When he was late for his homecoming reception in the town hall, they held an impromptu talent show. I ended up singing some songs, and that's how I was discovered.
Having a belief in God, being able to find joy, despite your circumstances or put yourself outside of yourself, and stop looking inwards and look outwards a little bit really helps to carry through tough times. Giving makes you feel better.
My version of 'Georgia' became the state song of Georgia. That was a big thing for me, man. It really touched me. Here is a state that used to lynch people like me suddenly declaring my version of a song as its state song. That is touching.
I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful - there's no one that has all the answers.
Some of the best times in my life happened under the influence of drugs... I'd still be doing it if I could make good judgement calls. I'd still be doing it if I didn't blow up to the size of an aircraft hangar, because it was a great time.
What happens is I speak to people outside of my circle of friends and they have already formed an opinion of me based on the things that people have written. That is the effect of journalism on my life, and sometimes it isn't very pleasant.
At school, I was always daydreaming and fiddling in inkwells, but I had to learn to grow up and become articulate. And doing that was what brought me into writing songs. It's like therapy for me, because it exposes what I'm really thinking.
Music is not a very stable business. It comes and it goes, and so does money, but your education stays with you for the rest of your life. When you have that education, and you have nothing to fall back on, you can get a get a job anywhere.
You could say that too much time has passed for us to take up new styles so it's entirely up to us to improve. I personally wanted to produce a voice that's different from when I did "V.V.I.P" so I put a lot of effort into finding my voice.
The music teacher thought I sang like a goat. It was kind of devastating. A few months after that, I participated in a music contest and won. I took my little trophy to school and rubbed it in his nose. I said to him, "What do you say now?"
I never made it to the school choir because the music teacher didn't like my voice. I was pretty sad. But he was probably right; I did have a voice a bit like a goat, but my dad told me to never give up and to keep going, and it's paid off.
I really feel like life will dictate itself. You should allow it to unfold as naturally as possible. Just go with the flow. When you're really desperate, you say a few prayers and hope for the best. That's the way I've always lived my life.
There was a time when I was - after my very first record from Nashville, I thought I might not be one of those who actually really makes it, and I may end up back in Canada, just playing clubs. And that might - this might have just been it.
I was super-obsessed with cover videos. When I was, like, 10, I would come home from school and watch them from 4 o'clock until 8 o'clock every night. I was so intrigued that people took these super-popular songs and did them their own way.
The first Tuesday of November, every year it is the same Every Aussie heart is beating with the excitement of the game For they bet on dream or fancy or the forms they've followed up From a dollar up to thousands on the famous Melbourne Cup
In regards to being a fashion aficionado, there's a certain amount of taking yourself seriously in the professional world. The self-effacing person can't completely go down the serious road. But I design, and love when things are beautiful.
I love food, so having a lot of food allergies now and just having a really sensitive body, it forces me to be very mindful and conscious and eat when I'm hungry, not just when I'm bored, and just really slow down. Everything in moderation.
Sometimes in love it just gets to the point where I have to give up. I have to give up trying and I have to give up believing because I know things won't change. To me, giving up isn't being weak. Giving up is being strong enough to let go.
In the future, artists will get record deals because they have fans-not the other way around...The only memento 'kids these days' want is a selfie. It's part of the new currency, which seems to be 'how many followers you have on Instagram'.
You know, we just buy music now. We don't make it any more. And that goes for just about everything. I think it's so important that people develop and subscribe to and have confidence in their own ability to make music, however rough it is.
I used to imagine that making it in music - really making it in music - is if you're an old man going by a schoolyard and you hear children singing your songs, playing jump-rope, or on the swings. That's the ultimate. You're in the culture.
Sometimes it starts with a random lyric idea that sets the tone for the whole song. Chords and sounds build from the lyric and rhythm, kind of. Sometimes it's a track I fall I love with... but writing my own songs, I rarely write on tracks.
We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.
But when you hear the complete album, it gets dark, really straight-up rock, with some really intimate moments with just me and the piano. It's not completely me because there are parts of me that aren't on that song, that are on the album.
I learned some invaluable lessons in Nashville that apply to both farming and show business: Do not corner something you know is meaner than you; keep skunks of all kinds at a distance; if you forgive your enemies, it messes up their heads.
I've always been singing all my life, but I started playing guitar when I was 19, and that was my final year in university, in law school. I think that happened when I started making a lot of friends who were in the independent music scene.
Sometimes when you're a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don't care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.
I'm constantly scared. I'm constantly fearful of what's to come and people don't realize that just because you're doing something doesn't mean that you're fearless but you get up every day and you do it. It takes a lot of courage to be real.
If I have taken part in anything perceived as the fame machine, it's been my choice. My motivations certainly have been different from some people's that I've worked with. But it's okay to work equally passionately for two different reasons.
It's fun and super exciting to see how other people work, how other people write music, and how other people put things together. To me, it's an endless learning process, and I love doing it because everybody works so completely differently.
I've become more introverted as I've got older. I used to be an outgoing person who joked around a lot, but as the amount of energy I expend by sharing my music has increased, I like to balance it by spending time by myself and recuperating.
We never made attempts to say we were anybody's role model or the be-all-end-all of what people should look up to. We have always just been very open about the fact that we have difficulties and we are messed-up people, just as our fans are.