I hear a really good pop song every now and then. 'ROAR' by Katy Perry, I love that! 'Poker Face'... Oh! What a song! And 'Rolling in the Deep'... Oh!
In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.
There are no rules when it comes to songwriting, so I'd turn Carter family songs from the 1930s into pop songs.
My earliest memories as a child are listening to Beatles records, and they are a big part of how I've learned to write pop songs.
When we first started out we only had five or six songs we could play live, so if we ever got an encore, we used to do our cover of City High's 'What Would You Do?' We'd be playing it and people's mouths would be moving singing all the words, but they'd be thinking, Where is this song from? It's such a brilliant pop song but the lyrics are so dark.
Many pop songs seem to be more potent now than in their heyday.
I admire pop songs that are perfect at three minutes.
I've never really gotten into the whole labels thing. There were times I would cover a pop song, and people would say 'You sound really country.' I gave up on that whole thing a long time ago.
Creating a decent pop song is a challenge - and occasionally, once in every decade - it's kind of fun to do that.
