LP Quotes

If you can't handle the responsibility of a hit single, don't write one.

When you're like, 'Yo, we gotta write a hit song, we need a hit song right now,' that never works. Every time that happens, I never write a hit song.

Well after 'Fast Car' was so huge, everyone was asking me, 'What's the next song?' At the time I just had ideas I was working on, but it was very clear I needed to finish another song ASAP, and that's how 'Perfect Strangers' came about.

No matter what, if you write a song that's great that everyone expects to be a hit, then everyone's going to be expecting another one from you. If you write a song that no one notices, you're going to want to write one that someone will.

The joy of songwriting only gets messed up if you are trying to follow up a big success, or you are trying to create a hit single, or if you have conscious thoughts of a particular outcome for the music.

I just write songs and hope that they do well. I'm sure there is some pressure from someone at the label, but I'd rather keep away from it.

It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn't mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don't realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, 'Just let me do what I do.'

I feel the only way I can survive is to spend a lot of time writing songs. I have to have incredible, killer songs that also are hits, or I just don't have a chance.

Music has become a bigger business, and with that there is more pressure to succeed; I think that it creates a negative pressure for being creative.

I've been fortunate Daytona is a place I've run better than anywhere else, and that's a big race. Maybe it has to do with attention and pressure and the drive to do well when a lot of people are watching.

It's so nerve-wracking to be on a set. They're the most stressful place in the world, because you're making something permanent, and there are so many people relying on you in a lot of ways.

There was an enormous amount of pressure when my first album took off, and I struggled with the speed of everything and the exhaustion from the constant touring.

With my quick success, I didn't have time to learn the ropes of the music business. Because my first record was such a hit, I was terribly spoiled and I thought I couldn't do anything wrong. I was also desperate to make tons of money because of my responsibility to my daughter. And there was no longer any joy in making music.

Every time you have to come up with a new body of work for a new show, you're aware that people are just ready to rip you apart, they're just waiting for you to fall or make the slightest trip up.

This constant pressure from record companies to come up with a hit single or something like that, I find completely tiresome.

I do feel pressure from the outside world a little bit just because everybody wants new music, which is really nice. It just proves that everybody likes what I'm doing. But at the same time, I feel like it's important to just chill and experience things and really make the songs true to me.

Especially when the expectations become so high of you, you always remember the last record that might have been really successful, and you're trying to outdo that or trying to make something that does not sound like the last record.

Most of the time, you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.

Following in the footsteps of Berry Gordy, I always admire what he did.

I had my whole life to write a bunch of crappy songs and then play them in front of people and think, 'All right, that one out of these seven is really good; it's a keeper.' But on this second album, to be honest, I probably wrote about 50 songs where I was just trying to write a hit.

I feel as much pressure as anyone does about their work, really. You just want to be productive; only difference is that the work is seen and judged by a few more people.

I live in L.A., and whenever I get together with anybody to write, everybody is obsessed and fearful and wants to write a hit for everyone else. They wanna write a hit for Rihanna; they wanna write a hit for Katy Perry.

I had written or cowritten eight of the ten songs on 'Beauty and the Beat,' and I had written our biggest hit, 'We Got the Beat.' How was I going to top all of that?

Pressure has always been more of a friend than a foe for me with songwriting.

I think, as a composer, pressure should be something that makes you better.