Nuno Bettencourt Quotes

I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.

We start a lot with melodies and instrumentation and trying to figure out good melodies for verses and choruses. We get to lyrics sometimes second, so we'll start humming a melody, finding something, and see where the music takes you as far as lyrics are and what you want to say and go from there.

There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.

I bring up 'The Heist,' and you can almost cut that record down the middle between songs where the beat came first and the words came second, and songs where the words came first and the beat came second. It can start with a vibe, a beat that drives a story, or it can start with a story and then trying to identify the tone to tell that story right.

When I'm recording, I usually just mumble and hum a melody and then fill the words in as I go.

As a songwriter, I've always loved to tell stories. But in my band, it was always about what would make sense for a band to put out.

I generally prefer to come in to the studio with a fully written song and then work on the arrangement with the band. Sometimes even the arrangements are pretty much already worked out in my head, but other times we experiment.

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.

I really didn't think about song writing.

I think you can have the greatest lyrics in the world and if it doesn't have the best tune in the world it will suck. I mean if the music wasn't important it would just be a poem.

I find it harder to write the lyrics afterwards because then you're just trying to fit them into something that's already there.

I'll have the music, and then I'll just turn the microphone on, press Play and Record and sing. And whatever comes out ends up being the melody.

Rap is something you can just throw on the skillet and fry up real quick. That's how it comes to me, my train of thought. It's like getting dressed - I don't have to sit down and stare at clothes, I just pick what I like and put it on. But rock, you gotta put it in the oven and let it bake.

Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.

If you write songs you have an idea how they're going to sound.

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 always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

Usually I write the songs at home and then I bring them in to the band; when we play them as a band, that's kinda how we figure out the feel of how they're going to be presented on the record or live.

When making the first album, I think I wrote a song about every six months. The first album was so much about the vocals carrying it.

'Chandelier' took, like, four minutes to write the chords, then, like, 12-15 minutes to write the lyrics. Probably 10 or 15 minutes to cut the vocals.

When you use a sample in a big way, when you loop something in the way I did with 'Runaround Sue,' it's like you have your chords and your melody and the quality of the song right there before you add your own production. It's like the song is already made, in a sense.

I'd love to write a song that someone else sings that can actually sing really well.

You work very hard on the lyrics. Getting them to fit the contours of improvised melodies.

Once I've got something that I feel is strong, if I get long enough to think about it, it'll turn into something. I'll start thinking about the drums - what the drums are doing, what the bass is doing. Then, if I can remember it by the time I get to a recording device, it'll turn into a song.

When it comes to making a song, whatever the beat tells me to do, I do.