St. Lucia Quotes

Whether I'm writing solo stuff, electronic stuff, or material for Motley, I just write to write. I come up with it and put things in different piles.

Obviously spending my teenage years in music, and in popular music, I wanted to continue this career, but in a way that allows me to dictate it and create it myself as opposed to relying on third party or more corporate decision making.

When you write, produce, engineer and mix everything yourself, it tends to take a long time to do anything. And when you're a perfectionist little monster, it makes it even harder. But it's a blast and I wouldn't trade the opportunity for all the ice cream sandwiches in the universe.

I'm not interested so much in collaboration. You see that from the history of my albums.

I'm so hard on myself that when I'm in the studio, I'll write 10 songs and only use one. So those nine songs that are left over, I always think, 'Where could these go? Who could they be for?'

I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

I'm very, very open to experimenting with different people and trying to find different methods of writing and making music.

Songs seem to take me a long time. I don't know why; they're not especially excellent for taking so long.

People try to change up my method, but I'm gonna keep doing it the same way I've been doing it: going in the room by myself and making a song.

There were numerous times where, at the end of a week of working on a song, there was a part of it that we still weren't feeling, so we'd scrap the whole thing and start from scratch the next week.

When I'm in the studio, I'm experimenting, trying things on.

Even when I'm making my own solo records, I'm collaborating with people. It keeps things interesting for me.

Albums, with me, have never had an easy birth. Especially when all the songs are self-written songs.

We write so many songs, it is difficult to narrow them down.

I'm the most indecisive person in the world. I'll do three versions of a song, then think, "Is the demo better?"

You have to love writing a song and architecture. You have to give it a form. It is my job to create a sonic landscape. I like to create ambiance and atmosphere. The writing is the intimate part of it. It is a sketch. The production is the whole painting.

I think I'm a maker of songs, and songs are like films or a picture: You put them over there, and they have nothing to do with you.

It takes me a lot of time, and it's almost frustrating for the guys sometimes because they're waiting for a new song. And I - it's just so important for me to get the perfect, exact, right song.

I love when people will say, "Oh, my songs are my children." I understand that, but I'm also not afraid to kill my kids. I know when the time has come to throw it in the trash can. With a child you've got to go to therapy and put it in daycare and buy it birthday presents. With a song, you can shove it in a dark closet and tell it you'll be there when you're ready.

Anytime you spend six months on a song (Born to Run), there's something not exactly going right. A song should take about three hours.

I haven't been walking around for years with some burning desire to do a solo record. If I had, maybe I'd have made a record that was experimental. Usually, the idea of a solo record is to get some weird stuff out of your system, but I don't think like that. I wasn't interested in making something that was a hard listen - maybe I'll get around to that some other time. I wanted it to sound effortless, not like I was trying to reinvent the wheel.

Songwriting is a very frustrating art form. You have to get on tape exactly what's playing inside your head

With my records, it's just a matter of trying to create something fresh for myself in a very finite context, which is the pop song. I don't know anything about the people who buy my records, and what, if anything, they get out of them.

I have tried to write songs quickly that get scrapped. I've also taken a long time on songs that get scrapped because you can over-think something, and you've squeezed the life out of it. As opposed to work of art, it looks like a really great work of craftsmanship.