Some MCs don't take the time to take a beat home or just vibe with it and just figure out, 'How do I attack this track?'
If you asked me to make a Gaslight Anthem album on my own, I would say, 'No way, that's crazy.' I would never have been able to do that.
With lyrics, being a poet gave me a different approach than other people.
When I write songs, I like to write lyrics first, and I think that's different from a lot of singer-songwriters. But I heard Sammy Cahn was asked what comes first, the lyrics or the music, and he said, 'The paycheck.'
I was a storyteller for The Band. It was never, 'Hey guys, here's a song about what happened to me.' I was always more comfortable writing fiction.
With songwriters like me who are prolific, you just write the song and then put it on tape.
I really like writing poetry and lyrics because it's one thing where I give up control. I don't feel like I need to be in control of it. I just sort of let it happen, and then I know when it's done. I know when it's finished.
I stopped writing lyrics down on paper after me and Jay-Z did 'Money In the Bank.' They're something I just hold in my mind.
Writing dialogue is like writing a song, which I've done.
When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.
I started writing rhymes first and then put it to the music. I figured out I could lock it to the beat better if I heard the music first. I like to get a lot of tracks, put the track up and let the music talk to me about what it's about.
You know, I've written many of my songs while driving - which is against the law in many cases.
I don't know why, but there's a certain element of panic in writing lyrics that I'm not sure I enjoy. I don't write lyrics first, ever. I've never done that. So, in a sense, the lyrics are a bit of an afterthought - it's music first.
What is so beautiful about a composer and a lyricist is that their job is to push a story along and not halt it.
A lot of people talk to me about writing lyrics and it is obvious they are really paying attention to the fact that ours are different from a lot of other bands.
The thing is, in English I'm able to write the lyrics as I'm making the song, once I'm done with the melody.
I've been studying people - a homeless guy in Scotland, a blind accordion player in London - and they've inspired the lyrics I've been writing.
'Bright Star' has been designed and the songs have been formulated around the way that I sing. That is the biggest gift of anything.
We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.
We'd love to collaborate with Sam Smith. I've told him. Many times. We've got loads of songs we've written that we can literally just hear his voice on.
It's a different process for me, but it's really cool to hear someone else singing the song that you wrote.
Basically I write songs, and I need for there to be a home for these songs.
For me, naming bands was the forerunner to really writing lyrics, because I work off titles.
I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.
Everything that Traffic ever did, I'd give Steve a complete lyric, titled, written out with the verse, the bridge, the shape and rhyme and then Steve had to figure out how the meter of the words would fit musically.
