I usually start with the words. The rhythm of the words gives me the rhythm of the song, and then I look for the musical highlights in it to carry it.
I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning.
Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.
When I started rhyming, my favorite rhythms were from John Coltrane and some of the things he did on sax. And certain rhythms that I hear on drums, I try to emulate with my words, dropping on the same patterns that them beats or them notes would hit.
I pay a lot of attention to whitespace. I pay a lot of attention to the rhythm of words together.
I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.
A pop song is a condensed version of a life in three minutes, whereas, when you go to write your prose, you have to find the rhythm in your words, and you have to find the rhythm in the voice that you have found and the way you're speaking.
I had gone to Paris to immerse myself in painting and I came back wholly involved in words and rhythms.
