Mat Kearney Quotes

I don't specifically sit down to write a Motley Crue song, so for me, that's how it works. The things that sound like they might be Crue, I put aside on my hard drive and keep them in that pile.

The first album is a special one for most bands or most artists in general. The first record is your whole life, and then after that you have a couple of months to write stuff and get it for the next record.

I like to separate the music- and lyric-writing processes if I can. I'll sort of noodle around on my keyboard and my computer until I have a beat or a chord progression, I'll record it as a loop, export it to iTunes, then walk around with the loop and sort of talk to myself in the loop, and that's how I get the lyrics.

When I start working on a batch of tunes - like roughly 10 solid tunes - I always know there'll be another 10 to follow, because for every song I invest a lot of time in, there's another song waiting behind it.

There's a song called 'All We'd Ever Need,' which is actually the first song that the three of us wrote together on our first album, and when we wrote that song I didn't have any real experience to pull from.

For me to create an album of 12 songs, I've got to write about 80 songs. Half of those are totally weird and rubbish. But I get to some really good stuff after a while.

So it was just a case of getting a bunch of songs that I had been writing for years but hadn't recorded together, and the result was My Own Best Enemy.

I've had this song in a drawer for a long time, maybe seven or eight years. Every time I'd do an album, I'd take it out and listen to it, and always liked what it had to say. Plus when Garth came in and sang on it, that made it really special.

When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time.

We've written something like 900 songs in all.

I feel like I always describe myself as a late bloomer. My first album, in my mind, was that I had a few songs I needed to take from incomplete demos to working with someone else and finishing them.

I feel like you listen your whole life, so when you are in the studio, your references are all the songs and music that you know. It just depends on where the songs are going and what attracts you at the moment.

I've written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that's what's been fun about looking back.

Writing 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' was one of the most hilarious experiences I have ever had in the studio because it just happened so naturally.

I wrote my first song at the age of 9 and of course it didn't make any sense.

When we made the first album, it was meant to be a snapshot of Mumford & Sons in 2009.

Part of my growth as a producer was not just about making beats but also helping in the process of inspiring the song and making the song the center.

I have worked with a lot of people, all very different creatives, helping me hone my craft and discover myself as an artist and the record I want to make. It's such an amazing process seeing and hearing the tracks that people could eventually be listening to on my debut album!

For every album we worked on, I brought in reels of tape of somewhere between fourteen and eighteen songs - some of them completed, with lyrics and melodies, some of them basic tracks. Things came out of those products. Like, for 'Hotel California', I think I had a reel with sixteen songs on it.

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

When we arrive at the studio, we put the kettle on, have a cup of tea, say, 'How's the family? You still got that old car? Is that dog still alive?' and then we start jamming. That's how the songs get written.

When I started making music, I made music in a very commercial space and I didn't have room to really explore things on my own terms. It took me awhile to create a little bubble where I could explore other things, and new things. When I did that, my tools were songwriting and arranging.

I started writing "Peace Trail" here in Colorado, then I went back to California. I had a few other tunes going around in my head, so I had a couple of them finished after a few days and then I wanted to go into the studio.

The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.

I'll let the record [Who You Selling For] speak for itself. I don't want to get too in-depth with my personal opinions of it and where the songs came from because I think it messes with the listener to know the inside mindset of the writer. For example, I watched a Pink Floyd documentary the other day, and I learned that "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" was about [frontman] Syd Barrett. I didn't want to know that!