Nina Nesbitt Quotes

Starting a band is the easy part. Once you've formed the band, you have to tell a story, and that story requires songs. And not just good songs, but great songs. After a while, great songs won't do - they have to be the best. Success doesn't make it any easier. Each time I start a new record, it's a brand-new search.

I had my whole life to write a bunch of crappy songs and then play them in front of people and think, 'All right, that one out of these seven is really good; it's a keeper.' But on this second album, to be honest, I probably wrote about 50 songs where I was just trying to write a hit.

To me, I don't care if I co-write or if I write alone. If it's a great song and it makes it to the record, then that's what is supposed to come, you know what I mean.

I try to make the songs as good as I can - the way I like it, you know? And I guess my taste sometimes happens to be what other people, particularly radio programmers, like too.

I think I see a lot of artists struggling to make their first album perfect, and I've been there.

Even at my biggest, I want to be writing for other artists. Even at my peak - the highest I can be as an artist - I always want to be keeping my creative juices flowing, keeping money in the bank, putting my intellectual property out there.

I'm not Prince or Rivers Cuomo, who brags about having hundreds of great songs.

I become more seasoned, it's less interesting to try and compete in the pop market.

The whole industry evolves around a great song.

I would rather put out two year-defining songs a year than flood the market with eight or nine songs.

My plan was always to leave school and live in a flat with some friends, have a 9 to 5 job, and try to get as many gigs as I could. I wanted to keep writing and then eventually, in my twenties, head to a record label and hope they'd sit down and listen to my book of songs, sign me as a songwriter and maybe an artist in development.

A lot of pop music is based on trying to make people remember it so that they'll buy it. To me, it was not about that.

No one told me I had to make something that would sell, but I personally want everyone to like my music.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

I think the record industry has gotten to be more about labels wondering what the new single is rather than labels nurturing artists. It's gotten away from making a full album of music that someone would want to listen to all the way through.

When I started out, I wrote the songs, recorded the songs, mastered, mixed, did the artwork, made the packaging and did the distribution, all myself. Now I understand what everyone's jobs are, who is doing them right, and who isn't.

If you're only making an album every 10 years, it better be good.

Albums take a lot out of you.

Capitol Records were very keen for me to write and see how I got on; I think that is what defined my sound. The first session I had was with two young up-and-coming writers, Nick Atkinson and Tom Wilding, and I went into a session a bit nervous because I hadn't written that many songs before.

To think that when they come out with these gigantic songs, it's pretty tough to top them, you know.

As a producer, you're pretty much creating a body of work that an artist has to stand behind.

There were aspects of stardom I didn't like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write 'Setting Sons,' I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.

I think that every song has to be like it could be the biggest hit of my album.

When you have a reputation for making not only good songs but great albums, that in itself creates added artistic pressure. But, at the end of the day, I guess that pressure is something I welcome.

No matter what I'm doing for myself or someone else, I'm constantly writing and working on other people's albums.