My second album was written while I was on the road promoting the first record. I tried to take my personal experiences and elevate them to universal experiences, so that I wasn't writing songs about living on a tour bus or being on a TV set for the first time.
After Silk Route disbanded I came on my own, and through the years, I have sung a few film songs while writing songs for my album.
When I write for an album, I'll always have about 30 different types of instrument around me. I set them up in a small room with my computer running GarageBand, which is always set to record.
It's easy for me to write songs but hard for me to write an album; that's been my experience.
At the time I was writing the second album, I was sitting home in my underwear all day every day; I didn't have all that much to write about except for my own life and my family.
I never have a clear goal or a theme when it comes to writing an album.
'Supermodel' was a hard record for me; it was an emotional record to write. I was purging a lot of stuff with that album, and I think the one thing I didn't really consider, that I'd be supporting it for two years and living in that state of mind every night.
I had something to prove and went in the studio and started writing. I got into fitness and style and learned the whole craft. That was when I wrote everything on the album. I put out 'Don't Ya,' and it took off.
I think that most people who hire me to do a remix just want it to work in a nightclub, whereas when I'm writing my own album, I don't have to worry so much about 2 A.M.
The hardest thing about writing my second album is that I had 20 years to write my first album.
The second album is the hardest to write. It's nothing like the first album.
It's inevitable that if you write an album or a song, obviously it's going to come from how you feel. You're writing it for yourself, it's just the way it is.
You don't realise how long three years is until you go away and write an album.
When we finish this tour we are going to begin writing and go into the studio to hopefully have a brand new Foreigner album out in early spring next year. This will be the first Foreigner album out in about ten years.
We fought during 'The Wall,' which was an album Waters wrote, based on his family story, we clashed long before that, during the period of the Dark Side and 'Wish You Were Here.' Actually, we never got along.
When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.
I had the idea to spend the year off in 2008 and start writing a rock album. I wanted to do something else other than melodic metal after more than ten years of After Forever. I thought it would be nice to sidestep into rock.
95% of the album is my writing, by choice, because it seems to be what the distributors want.
I wrote the album [Metals] in the fall. In about four months, I went from zero to finished. It usually takes forever.
