Quote

You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions.

Songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter. But otherwise, music is about a beat and a message. If the beat gets to the audience, and the message touches them, you've got a hit.

When you put the musical in front of an audience, you get to see how the audience reacts.

I appreciate an audience that reacts to the music, even if they jump on stage and try to beat us up, I think that's a fantastic reaction. I think that they're really hearing something then.

The point about melody and beat and lyric is that they exist to engage you in a very particular way. They want to occupy your attention.

When you get into a production, there are a lot of things you have to hit to make the show work - like my cues or a cue for another person or making sure you don't mess up the beat, and you can let all of that get in the way.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

People make music to get a reaction. Music is communication.

The sheer force of the music calls for a wild audience reaction.

In a sense, a hit belongs to the person who made it popular, but if a tune is good enough to attain tremendous success, then it certainly deserves more than one version, one treatment, one approach.