I find the greatest songs in the world come out of pain, and I don't like it! Here's what it does: It strips away all of your facade. It makes you so honest. It's cleansing.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes.
As a songwriter I hate this whole, 'If it's a sad song, it has to sound like a sad song thing.' And that goes all the way back to my days with the Format. I'm an insane narcissist, so if I have to get something off my chest, I'll get something off my chest.
To me, there's two types of songs, good and bad. And I just like to stick with the good ones.
A lot of my albums that I've done, a lot of the songs have been the first take. It's before you mess with it too much - you can take away all the spontaneity and the emotion of something by trying to make it sound perfect.
That's what I enjoy most about my music - that it heals in its own time and makes us look at ourselves in its own time.
There's just a natural human element to a great song that feels immediately satisfying. I like the song to create a mood.
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!
The most entertaining songs don't always come from a nice place. In songs where I think I'm being really sensitive, they seem quite boring actually. I've found that the songs that come out of nastier, more misanthropic places are better.
The thing I love about music is that you can take things that are painful, deep things that hurt you, and you can turn them into something beautiful.
I walk away from writing what I consider to be a good song - with a good character, a good story in it - with all I'm gonna really get out of that song. My greatest pleasure is to create it, not to record it, not to hear anyone else play it, though that can be nice too.