Love songs are all about how I'll move a mountain for you and I'll never hurt your feelings. I've never been given a mountain, and if you love me, you should hurt my feelings sometimes. If I walk outside looking ugly in that shirt, you don't love me if you don't hurt my feelings a little bit and tell me.
I think I drift toward sad love songs.
I think 'Lovin' Feelin' was probably one of the most - probably in '64 and '65, one of the more dramatic love songs for these kids to grab hold of. I mean, they had been listening to, you know, kind of cute songs, and 'Lovin' Feelin' was just a strong, powerful song.
But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now.
So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.
I'm really a singer, so I love songs and I love singing. I like rap music, but I didn't grow up freestyling.
I remember thinking that writing love songs was stupid and cliche, and that my job was to not write love songs, because there are enough of them.
So, anyway, I think the format of love songs for me stopped becoming about people and started becoming about life.
I'm extremely happy, but I don't do love songs for the most part. It feels weird; that's such a personal thing to me. I'd rather live that in my real life and play a different character outside of that.
I love songs because by nature they are concise; they sum up. I try to use as few words as possible. It's usually funnier that way, anyway.
