The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.
I really didn't think about song writing.
My job is to work at song writing and singing and telling the truth in song writing. My job is to be courageous enough to go on stage and tell the truth, the same truth that's gone into my song writing.
Mostly, in song writing, my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes. But the urge to write is something you have to have. A conviction, an ambition to write and never stop until you think, 'This is the best I can do.'
Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.
U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.
Song writing has been a lifeline for me.
I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen.
Elvis Costello's song writing is so peerless and individualistic. It's storytelling and it's deeply intelligent and clever.
You can get too bogged down in technology and you can sort of forget what it is you were trying to do. And with the Pet Shop Boys it's primarily about the songs, it's about song writing.
