I think with musicals, it's much more part of the script. They don't want songs that would stop the show; they need songs that keep the plot moving.
I like switching gears. I'm kind of a chameleon.
Cheap Trick has played with every band on the planet.
The Ting Tings have been a huge hit in my family. I have two young daughters, and both of them love that record, so I pretty much have to listen to that ten times a day.
I don't know if there's a particular project, but one movie that I was really disappointed I didn't get to work on was Judd Apatow's 'Walk Hard.'
We were called 'Three Men Who, When Standing Side by Side, Have a Wingspan of Over Twelve Feet.' We had that name for a week or so. We were also called 'Are You My Mother?' for awhile. We went through a lot of really dumb band names - almost as dumb as Fountains of Wayne.
Your job as a producer is to make suggestions without putting your ego in front of everything else. Also, I think you want to focus on that artist's best qualities and really highlight them.
Most of the jobs I've gotten are from people calling me. I don't actively solicit a lot of work like that, but maybe I should.
I am not very regimented unless I have to be. I wish I was someone that could just write every day, but I tend to work on specific projects for a specific period of time and then stop.
Either I need an assignment with a strict deadline - like something for a movie or a TV show or whatever - or else I need to create a made-up deadline for myself for my own records. Otherwise, I don't write anything.
I normally write on acoustic guitar, although piano is the instrument that I actually studied. Occasionally, I'll write on the piano or sometimes with no instrument at all.
Really, music is what I'm interested in, and the lyric part of it came from just having to have something to sing.
It would probably be better if I got involved in fewer things just because I'd have more time to write for my own purposes... But if somebody calls you up with a really cool project, it's hard to just say 'no' because you don't feel like working.
The truth is that I don't work any harder than anyone else in the world. I don't work 18-hour days. I don't stay up until 4 in the morning trying to finish a line.
I'm just like anybody else: I have stuff to do in the day, whether that's writing a song or recording a song. I try to treat everything I do as just work.
It's always been my philosophy to keep a lot of balls in the air. With music, most things don't pan out, so you try to increase your odds by being involved with a million things at once.
I'm not comfortable as a lead singer. Maybe I could do it in the studio, but I wouldn't have the confidence to play shows.
