I realized at a young age that sequence in an album is almost as important as the songs that are on the album.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I guess the idea of doing albums in their entirety, in sequence, appeals to people. I guess it's the memory of being able to hear the music in the way it was originally presented.
I tend to name albums after one of the songs.
Those albums are so important to me because, for the first time, I was making my own music, paying for it, finding strengths in it, and going through the process of finding the right music for the record.
If part of the purpose of making an album is to get some radio play, then you might as well think about that. But that's not really how we picked the songs.
I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.
My main objective with every album is to capture a moment in time, which usually makes the whole process very relaxing. I only discover in retrospect when looking back at the songs how my life is going!
I continue to believe, contrary to the given wisdom, that it's more interesting to have an album - or, indeed, an individual song - which has variety rather than homogeneity.
An album is a thing you take time out and go work on.
Albums are like diaries. You go through phases, technically and emotionally, and they reflect the state that you're in at the time.
I realized if I'm not really making an album, I don't have to be concerned about things like stylistic consistency, pacing, a coherent mood. All that stuff goes out the window.