Caroline Polachek Quotes

You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.

I'm always good for starting a bit of a tune and the first verse, but after that I just can never go anywhere. It takes me years, that's why I'm so slow.

I have a really hard time writing my own lyrics for this record, because one, I had to write so many and also I was kind of perplexed by the idea of how I was going to sing and play... because at that time, we hadn't really thought about asking someone else.

I can't legislate a song into being; it just will not happen for me.

One thing will lead to another and somebody will come up with a riff or a line or something we build from.

To write lyrics and sing stuff used to be a real chore for me, especially before this 'Diamond Eyes' record. I was spending years making records.

My songwriting process is painful. Songwriting is brilliant. It's a load of fun - when it works. It's really difficult as well.

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick.

All of our songs take these really big creative turns and twists throughout the process, so sometimes songs will start out as a melody or some musical chord progressions.

The first thing I do is lay out that melody and figure out how it has to hold here and then finish to land here, because you know in advance you're going to want the melody to catch four things in the action.

There's always ideas buzzing around, but it's whether they actually end up materialising into a song.

It was a difficult second record. I had moments where I couldn't write; had moments where I was writing lots. It was just a massive learning process for me.

I've learned and grown as a songwriter.

I think where a lot of the stuff came from is that it started as something else and then it was transformed into something that worked in the context of a song that I might have been working on.

When I first started making music, I wrote the lyrics first, but now, because the music has got kind of wilder, I've flipped it.

'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.

I pretty much started the lyrics and I hit a roadblock and I think Kerry finished them up. Then I came back and did the ending part. The whole 'Raining Blood.' That part. But it pretty much came together easy. It's a short song.

I've been writing music since I was about eight. I would write sporadically. I wrote a lot of music in high school. I guess the oldest song on the record ("I Thought I Saw Your Face") is about eight years old. It's the old "I had my whole life to write my first album and six months to write the second one." I did, to some degree, but actually, a lot of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote really recently. So it varies.

Sometimes something will come along, and it feels easy and sometimes you'll get 85 percent there on a song and the last 15 percent will elude you for three years.

I always find that, when it comes to writing songs, if the melody and the chords are working, we're 90 per cent there.

With Fountains Of Wayne, I almost always start with lyrics - maybe not the entire lyric, but I almost always need a couplet or something, and then I work from there. With Ivy, it's much more about the atmosphere and the vibe.

When I wrote 'Paradise,' it was going to be an interlude - like a segue from the song before. Then I just added more to it because everyone loved it.

I really don't have a method. I gravitate towards the organic/acoustic, but I still often complete songs musically before attempting to find the lyric.

Sometimes albums can be quick, sometimes they take forever, and we're very good at taking forever.

Sometimes something opens up in your brain as I'm writing, thinking about the song, and it's like a whirlwind. It all comes together and I could hear what I wanted the songs to sound like, I just didn't know how to express it.