Musical Narrative Quotes

It's easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.

My favorite music is when the sound is supplementing the message. I don't think it's dramatic; it's cinematic.

The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.

When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

Some people start with the lyrics first because they know what they want to talk about and they just write a whole bunch of lyrical ideas, but for me the music tells me what to talk about.

When I was singing "King of the Mountain," it was a pivotal point in the show. That's the song that took us from this concert setting of individual songs into the theatrical narrative piece.

Getting to do 'December Songs' in a cabaret-style format was so interesting because it's like a one-woman song cycle that actually tells a story. It feels like a theatrical experience more than a cabaret because I didn't talk in between. We went from one song to the next, nine songs in a row - bam - I told the story in half an hour.

I wanted to make an album that plays from the top to bottom and feels together and complete. That's just something that felt important.

When I'm writing film music, I feel like I'm more a filmmaker than a composer. It's more about what the film needs. I'm basically part of the team that's creating a film, and the music is a very important part, but it's just one part of many.

Cartoonist Walt Disney has made the twentieth century's only important contribution to music. Disney has made use of music as language.

I don't think I'll ever do a record that's just the same song over and over again because I'd like to think about it like it's an album and a snapshot of everything that makes you who you are and where you're at at that time in your life.

I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks. Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like what color the ashtray is. How far away the doorway was. So when you're talking about intangible things like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation.

Cause when you're sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

When I sit down to make a set list I usually think, 'We'll build it up here, take it down here, go into a quiet section here, explode here,' in a way that there's a flow and it doesn't feel like shuffle on an iPod.

Glam rock always has a story to tell and has that powerful voice with a little hint of libretto.

The blues is nothing but a story... The verses which are sung in the blues is a true story, what people are doing... what they all went through. It's not just a song, see?

One of the things I loved about the musical was that you listened to the soundtrack and it told you the story.

There is something about musical narrative and Australians. If you want to do something, you kind of have to do it at a level - because we're so far away from everywhere else - that exceeds what is just normal if you want to convince people that some guy from Australia is worth backing for an original musical.

In the modern operas that 'Miss Saigon' and 'Les Miz' are, nobody breaks out into song from conventional book dialogue. Everything is sung from beginning to end, including the recitative.

If I had my choice, I'd pick a song that tells a story every time. There is a great deal of pleasure in doing the vocal on a number that you can put feeling into.

I've always been jealous of rappers, because they can fit so many words into a song and tell a story with lots of details. But when you're a songwriter, you have to fit the words to the melody and you can't fit as much in. I'm just a big fan of storytelling.

I write most songs randomly. They don't always deal with something I've been through but something I think is important to tell.

Music was a big thing for me growing up and Scorsese and Tarantino both use music brilliantly in movies. They're probably two of the best at using music.

You can hear some artists, hear five of their albums and still have no idea who they are. But if you've heard most of what I've recorded, you know me. You go from 'Honesty' to 'Going Through Hell' - you can listen to the hits, and they pretty much reflect who I am. 'Take a Back Road' is the same thing.

The thing I don't want to do as a film composer is reiterate. I prefer to subtextualize or to underline rather than to say, 'This is what you should be feeling.'