Martie Maguire Quotes

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.

My producer, Michael Knox, he's kind of my eyes and ears on Music Row. While I'm out on the road, he's looking for songs, and then he and I will get together and go over songs.

I have these songs that I've been playing for so many years. They're so intimate and close to me. And these are songs that probably a major label would not be interested in - some of them, anyway - interested in putting on a record.

With Joe Walsh, that was kind of random. I'd written 'Hi-Roller Baby' for myself while I was at Island/Def Jam; literally, four years later, it got cut. Songs can be around for a long time.

I always knew I wanted to create original material, and after having meetings with all sorts of record labels, I decided that Sony was the right place to do it. They knew what I wanted to make and gave me the freedom to express myself.

I always said, if I got a record deal, I'd want to record the best songs I could, whether I wrote them or not.

I realized there are so many steps from getting a deal to having a hit.

I was invited to L.A. when I was 16 for a weekend-long songwriting session by a writer I had met through my voice teacher in Pittsburgh. My first hit, 'Hide Away,' was one of the songs written during those sessions. It was played for a radio rep who then started a new label; the song got a pretty organic start at radio and then took off.

Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.

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.

The record company didn't know what we looked like at first. They were all excited about our tapes.

When I first got into the major label system, they were like, 'Hey, you're great - now write with a million people so we can get songs.' That was something I hadn't done before, and the songwriters I was working with had worked on some massive numbers - like 'True Colours.' One of the guys wrote 'Livin On A Prayer.'

If you're on an indie label, you're not getting enough money. And if you're on a major, you're not getting enough support.

With my previous record deal, it'd be like, 'OK, so I have this track then, EMI - do you know any singers, maybe? Do you have any singers on your little label there?' And funnily enough, they didn't. But I prefer finding unknown singers myself anyway.

Someone had an eye on me as I was leaving high school. I had a chance to record demos, but they were kind of wanting to make a pop singer out of me, of the 'X Factor' variety. I didn't feel comfortable with it. I wanted to be a songwriter.

Being in a band is very much like a startup. You start in a garage. You hope to get interest from investors, like a major record label.

We believe that the Internet is the live concert promoters best friend although it might have crippled the record label business.

I got offered publishing deals to write country music, but it was not what I wanted to do.

I do loads of pitch writing as well, where you write a pop song and then pitch it to DJs who can then work with the song, and sometimes they keep your vocal on it. It's just good to be involved in different things.

In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should've done it just to see what that would have been like.

When you're a songwriter, you don't have control over which songs get heard and which ones don't.

We write constantly. It's nice to have more to pick from and we pitch songs to other artists, so it's not always songs for us.

Me and Future recorded so many songs that as soon as we did 'Honest,' I liked it a lot, but I didn't see it as a single. But he just kept talking about it after we did it like, 'Man, this is big. This is big. It's gonna be a single.'

I think Sam Smith's dad got a huge loan or something to help his career. Those things can help artists get attention, but I guess my song 'Say You Won't Let Go' proved it's about the song.