You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Writing songs is really about writing. It's not about necessarily focusing on one particular style or making it one particular thing.
Songs are not better just because they're emotionally honest. To write a song well, you have to put some work into it and grind it out.
There's this element of surprise when you're writing songs, like it's something outside of you that you get to be part of. And it's just exciting. And that's why I keep writing - because I like that feeling.
I tend to write songs that are about something pretty specific. A lot of them tell some kind of little made-up story.
You've got to put interesting people around you; you've got to work with people who are gonna inspire you to take the songs you've written into a completely different direction, because there's nothing more boring than going to the studio and predictably knowing what is going to happen.
It's hard to write music for specific things, because I'm always writing just to write.
I tend to write songs critiquing myself. The best way for me to deal with stuff is to write a song about it... That's not to say all my songs are like that.
The fun thing about song writing is that it's just creative. It can be whatever you want it to be. For me, I'm really protective of that. I'm not going to write something because I feel like it fits here or it fits there - I just want to write music that feels good to me, you know?
I'm not very good at writing songs when I have a lot of clutter in my mind.
Because my musical background is so diverse, it lends me to have very much my own style and it helps me to relate to the music as I'm going to play it. I just write. And if it comes out country, it's a country song. The funny thing is, I write all across the board. I just write what hits me at the time.