Quote

I always start with the music and then try to figure out what I want to write about lyrically.

We love great melodies and great songs that have great hooks and melodies, so we start a little bit more on that side as opposed to other people that start more lyric-based. Sometimes we'll do it the other way.

My songs tend to be about love. It drives some of the greatest songs. I'm looking forward to seeing what people make of my writing.

I really get inspired by songs. Like, if I hear a thug 'Want to kill ya' song, I'm ready to go out and get crazy. Or if you hear this really sexual, sensual slow song, I want to go have sex. I'm very animalistic when it comes to stuff like that. Very basic emotions.

Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.

I have a tape recorder, and I just sing into it. I like to write that way. Sometimes I'll just get melodic ideas, and then I'll go home and sit down and add the lyrics. Or sometimes I'll get a lyric idea that I love. Usually it's pretty combined. Usually I get some kind of a lyrical concept and a melody and work with that.

Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.

The lyrics are always the last thing I do. I always have a recording of basic tracks and maybe some of the lead work. I'll sit back and listen to it, and I'll just concentrate on what kind of feeling it gives me. My goal writing the lyrics is to not disrupt that feeling.

Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.

The first thing that inspires any song is a chord progression. When I have one I really like, I get into the lyrics even more.