Album Development Quotes

When I begin working on a production, I don't really think about my previous album or albums. I try to have a real creative process.

I'm really proud of 'Bright Lights' because I was still in the mind frame of my first album when I was putting it together, but next time I want to display something different. I don't want to be as young, immature and all about boys!

That's the funny thing - if there was a year and half or two years of us being a band like every other band and then getting signed, we would probably have made 'Pretty. Odd.' as our first album instead.

With 'Defenders,' we had some very barebones ideas, but the bulk of it came together very quickly over in Ibiza. The main thing I like about that record, looking back on it now, is the change in the texture of the production from 'Screaming For Vengeance.'

When I finally stopped [singing], he had been saying, like, the last day or so, he'd been saying, now, I think we should put this one in the album. So without him saying I want to record you and release an album, he kept - he started saying, let's put this one in the album. So the album, this big question, you know, began to take form, take shape. And Rick [Rubin] and I would weed out the songs.

Sea Change was so specific. From the beginning it was set what it was going to be. All the other ideas that I had at the time I had to put to the side.

Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. 'Odelay' was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.

We always started these albums as making demos, that went right on until Scary Monsters.

A lot of new artists sign their deal and then go into a development stage for a year or two or sometimes never get out of it. For me, because I had been a working songwriter in town, I had a collection of songs that I was ready to make into an album. At the time, I didn't realize it was becoming an album, but it was.

My task with 'Uh-Huh' was to make a more even record and get away from juvenile topics like 'Hurts So Good.' But I also knew if I wanted to continue, I had to have more hits.

Each album we [The Replacements] made was the one we were capable of making and wanted to make at the time. Each one was a progression or, depending on your opinion, a sidestep or tumble forward. I don't know what.

'Superunknown,' maybe more than most albums, didn't reveal itself to be what it was until the very end - literally until we were three quarters of the way through mixing it.

Quite understandably, people think that if there's a six-year gap or whatever, that it's taken me six years to make the album. It's not really like that at all.

You can never go back to the first two albums in a career.

When you do a pop album, the canvas is completely yours. There is no story situation forced on to your songs - you have the freedom to develop it right from the concept.

There's a point with every record we've made that the album starts to assert its identity, and I think that's kind of what happened with 'The Wolf.'

I really enjoy helping a band form their sounds and ideas from initial spark to completed album. Being a producer is different in that, at the end of the day, it is not my art. It's THEIR art, THEIR ideas, THEIR message.

The first record we made, we recorded and mixed in a day. The second record was recorded and mixed in a week. The third was recorded and mixed in a month, and 'New Wave' was mixed and recorded in six months. It was an epic project.

In terms of content and instrumentation, I feel we have been extremely ambitious on every one of our albums going back to high school. We were the first screaming hardcore band to put a big ballad on our record.

I'm just getting people warmed up a little bit at a time, a little bit at a time, so I can fully come with, like, a 'Fix You' - type record, or 'One' by U2.

It's weird talking about the album as a living being with its own thoughts and direction, especially if you're the one creating it.

I'm always sort of reflecting on what I do on what I've done. Usually before I make a new album, I'll listen to the previous albums just to see where I've been.

For 'Twisted Fantasy,' I probably spent 180 days in the studio.

I didn't want to play it boring and safe. I also didn't want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they're even scarier than first ones.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make, there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.