We think we understand a song's lyrics but what makes us believe in them, or not, is the music
There were country songs I connected to when there was pain, when I saw things my family were going through. It was my way of acknowledging I wasn't OK: music tapped on the door; I could work out these emotions by singing.
Springsteen's 'Thunder Road' and Carole King's 'It's Too Late' are examples of why I am a singer/songwriter. I practice these songs every day. The melodies are timeless in the rock world, the lyrics are words that I need to say, and they need to be heard again.
I didn't write those songs, but I can relate to every one of them... I have.
Music lives within thy lips Like a nightingale in roses.
You really do kind of learn a lot about a person when you watch and listen to the songs that mean something to them.
I think being a singer-songwriter... your job is to tell a story that other people can't really tell themselves. And I really hope that people kinda go: "This happened once and I kind of like this song because I relate to it..." So if at least one of my songs over this tour's that song, then that's really cool.
If I don't write a song, I only record it when it's played for me for the first time and I connect to it, am empowered by it, and have a deep connection to the lyrics.
I'm usually really drawn to a song, and I know it would be good to cover if it sounds like something that I could write, or I wished I could write. Sometimes a writer just sounds like they're in your head, and that is really cool for me.
I think the difference between a good song and a great song is... honestly, I think the lyrics, because if you have a really solid melody and solid track and everything is there but then the lyric is just okay, then you've got a good song.
I love being in a room in front of an audience who cares about the music, who knows the music, and who has lived with the music. It's kind of like an experience you share. I'm on stage performing it, but they're singing the words, too.
I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility.
I can't' really sing a song unless I really connect with the lyrics.
For me, a song doesn't really take flight until it has a lyric on it. ...Without a lyric that I'm happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn't have any resonance.
I've found lyrics in songs that always center me.
Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.
It is one of the most validating things for an artist like me, to have people sing along to your songs.
I love knowing that people are connecting to my lyrics, my music and me.
I think when you've lived a bit, you read more into the songs. I do, anyway. And you're sort of living the songs rather than performing them.
It's not so uncommon for me to get so wrapped up in a song that I cry several times when I sing them. That's the difference between my music and some of the other folks.
The visceral nature of hard rock music, the fact that you can have this sledge hammering sound - and that you can hook a lyric up and a feeling up to something and make the lyric jump into this machine that crushes. That has always been really attractive to me, that kind of power.
Everybody has their own way of hearing songs. My fans are usually pretty on point. Sometimes they go all the way to the bottom of it. It's fascinating to me how far an idea can go. I wrote most of my first album in my mom's kitchen, and now I can go around the world and hear people recite those lyrics, and understand the story, even though they're not from the same area I grew up in.
I really feel every word to every song a lot more than I have in the past.
When you are accompanied by the instrument - on an instrument like the lute-the lute and voice - you have this sound, and you feel how the music can be so touching and yet so simple.
You're able to get into somebody's brain through song.
