M. Ward Quotes

I'm a big proponent of letting songs tell me what they wanna sound like.

The editing of a song is largely what makes the song for me and I think that actually if I had started going like 'I want you to burn' it would have pinned that song down to a particular thing and made that song a smaller idea than what it is. By leaving that off it's much more open, broader.

I feel that recording a song already compromises the magical music one can create in the mind, so the fewer people watering down this process the better.

I've already done two cover albums. I don't know, maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to do another, but I just did the Led Zeppelin song for fun, and I thought I could do it kind of quick since songs that I love a lot I can do fast.

My philosophy on writing a song for myself is that I always, always, always want to write a song. I always want to write a song. I realize that as a record producer or a singer or whatever I might not, if I recorded on myself or someone else, the first time out I might not give it the right treatment, so that the world or many people will accept it and it'll be a public hit, or anything like that.

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing.

Everything I record, I just try to sound like me and come up with songs that suit what I do, and then just go for it.

The thrill of hearing your own voice recorded is still there, I still love it, going into the studio and thinking how can I sing this song and between the producers and the musicians you find a way of doing it.

I've always recorded the same way. I put down as many ideas as I have, then strip them away at the mixdown. It's better to have too much music than not enough.

Ultimately, if I'm really moved by something, it's going to go on the record and that's that.

When you get to know an artist, you find out the things that have peeved them over the years, and it's generally the stuff that has to do with somebody not wanting to do things their way in the studio.

I think a lot of people have the Frank Lloyd Wright model in their brains. The architect comes in with this act of creation and lays it down, and that's it. But that's not me.

I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.

I've written more songs for this record than I ever have in the past so I'm trying to give it a lot of special attention to be sure my ideas really get translated right.

My approach to recording and all that is pretty organic. It just has to do with all the songs I wrote; go in and record them.

I knew the second I finished the first record - 'House Of Balloons' - and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.

Because Led Zeppelin weren't having to worry about doing singles, each time we went in to record, it was a body of work for an album. So you could get the shift and the movement forwards as opposed to having to be rooted back to a single that might have been done a year ago.

I've finally figured out how to make a Rodney Crowell record, and that's let it be, leave the mistakes.

The cool thing about G.O.O.D. Music is it's a bunch of great ideas, and I'm one of those ideas.

For us, we make a song, and if we like it, it goes on a record.

I usually know the general emotion of a song, or the general feeling of it, and then I think I just get so excited by the act of recording. I love that process so much that I feel like if I knew exactly what I wanted I'd arrive at something too soon.

We go into the studio with the mindset of simply wanting to make something great.

Rick Rubin said, well, I don't know that we will sell records. He said, I would like you to go with me and sit in my living room with a guitar and two microphones and just sing to your heart's content everything you ever wanted to record. I said, that sounds good to me. So I did that. And day after day, three weeks, I sang for him.

I can't relate to the process of just disappearing and writing a record, all at the same time, followed by the sort of drudgery of going out on tour and trying to recreate the record, playing the same 12 songs every night.

I couldn't do "What's Love Got To Do With It", Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo; so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.