Lyrical Exploration Quotes

Poetry a riprap on the slick rock of metaphysics

It was about working with other musicians, but more than that it's about exploring musical areas that you could never do with the band you're in, in my case Judas Priest. You could tackle musical areas and lyrical areas that wouldn't be appropriate for Priest.

I'm really good at melodic and sonic things, but I don't really think I have anything to say. But I really enjoy the puzzle-making of taking words and adding a melody to them.

To me, a song is new every time I sing it.

Our first radio single, 'The Stage,' was eight-and-a-half minutes long. Unabashedly, we wanted to push the limits musically, lyrically, and instrumentation-wise.

When I'm writing songs, my favourite thing to do is to try and rabbit-trail and go places I've never gone to before. Just like exploring a new terrain or a new country or something.

I feel connected to every song on this record [ 'Modern Vampires Of The City' ], but yeah I think there's something special about 'Young Lion'. It's pretty different from any song that we've had before because the vocals are kind of between two different very simple instrumental piano melodies and it's almost like something that we call a vignette, it's sort of like a miniature.

I'm not interested in writing overtly autobiographical songs. I would rather explore interesting stories. I like the idea of the songs being evocative and distinctive, so I have in my mind the atmosphere that a film could evoke. I like to think of them existing in their own little world.

You can be whoever you want to be when you are writing songs.

With this record [The Colour and the Shape], I started taking the lyrics more seriously. This is a very personal album.

Sometimes I feel like I'm taking on a role when I'm writing a song, and it doesn't always have to be true. I'm not sitting in my room crying with my guitar, writing a slow solo about a depressing breakup; that's not me.

I find myself improvising a lot. But, sometimes I'll come us with a chorus or just one line and it will sort of hang out for a long time before it get's flushed out into a real living song.

I don't mind being labeled as a political songwriter. I've chosen to do that. What really annoys me is being dismissed as a political songwriter. That really pains me, because life isn't all about love; it's not all about politics, either. It's a beautiful mixture of events that absolutely baffle you, and you think, "Why can't I do something about that?", whether those events are in your bedroom, or out there in the wide world. In our daily lives we engage with them at different times, and I'm trying to write about the whole human experience, or my perspective on it anyway.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

'The White Album' is a record I can go back to time and time again, and always find something different that I never noticed or appreciated before.

Writing 'February' made me realize that breaking form is a way of letting the song be human.

I have a few songs that I'm figuring out and writing. I'm still figuring out the whole concept and how it's gonna connect to Cry Baby, but I have some ideas, yes.

The album feels like a new era for me -- emotionally, lyrically, sonically. It feels fresh, it feels new. It's still me. It's still stuff that fans know and love but it's a new chapter 100 percent.