Michael McKean Quotes

I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

I am a musician, but I'm another type of musician.

You can get too bogged down in technology and you can sort of forget what it is you were trying to do. And with the Pet Shop Boys it's primarily about the songs, it's about song writing.

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

When you are making an album, it is about the purpose - you are creating both a concept and vibe, then you follow through with that.

What happens with writing a song and demoing it, for me the demo always becomes the master.

Every single song has its own individual character and you can't treat each song the same way, because it wants to be treated differently and there are songs that are like scared birds that you have to sneak up on over the course of months in the woods.

I like being in a recording studio. I like watching a song go from the simplicity of the original music.

I just do what I do. I like to make music.

I get very deep into the writing and recording process.

I didn't have a lot to do with the first record.

I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't.

I go in and sing the song and arrange it and mix it and that's it. It's no different than playing in clubs.

I knew there was something about 'Sun Medallion,' in particular, because I just had to record it the second I wrote it.

For the most part, I like to record music as I write it.

When you first start writing a song, it's fun, then when you start recording it, it's fun, but by the time you've finished recording it, you're sick of it.

Every album is just a greatest hits of whatever songs are on a pile when I go in to make a record.

There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.

When we make records, it's hard to pinpoint one thing that inspires a record. It's usually a number of different things that lead to inspiration or wanting to write something down and share it with someone.

I've always been a fan of just writing songs and making music.

I walk away from writing what I consider to be a good song - with a good character, a good story in it - with all I'm gonna really get out of that song. My greatest pleasure is to create it, not to record it, not to hear anyone else play it, though that can be nice too.

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.

With 'Light,' I collaborated with a lot of different producers and musicians I respected, and we all wrote and worked on material which I then took to an old-school producer, David Kahne, and we put it all together. The lyrics came first - they were written before the music.

Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.