I'm a musician, I always was a musician, and now I've got a song on the radio, so I'm definitely a musician.
When I say I don't have to write pop songs anymore, there's no way I'm going to get on the radio at 60 years of age unless I'm doing a duet with Gaga or I was on 'All of the Lights,' which was a Kanye West record that managed to get on the radio.
It's like, on my solo stuff, every single person who buys the record, gets it. On the other stuff, the masses... when you have a hit on the radio, not everyone's going to get it. They are going to buy it for the hit.
It's not essential for me to have a big debut week; it's not essential for me to have big radio records.
Def Jam, they've shown nothing but love as far as supporting my records. We haven't missed yet, radio-wise, and every song that they've actually tried to support has been No. 1.
I've always wanted to have one of those hits on the radio, but we haven't really been able to crack that code.
The reason it has lasted for 30 years is for one reason and one reason only: Classic Rock radio.
'Smoke On The Water' was ignored by everybody to begin with. We only did it in the shows because it was a filler track from 'Machine Head.' But then, one radio station picked up on it, and Warner Bros. edited it down to about three and a half minutes. It then started getting played by lots of different radio stations.
When I do a song, it is more or less for the radio because I've got to do it - that's what I have got to do to win - I always go home and write two street songs.
But these days, I get a lot more attention and airplay from the Adult Contemporary and country radio stations, and I feel comfortable saying I'm a part of that.
I'm not really concerned so much with the industry, except in country music, as long as our fans keep coming to the shows and keep buying the records and we keep having success on country radio.
When I first started, in 2006, it was an exciting time. Independent, cool, weird artists were being successful, and magazines were writing about them, and people were getting played on radio that were, like, really good.
Before, I was more concerned with getting on the radio, like many young artists.
You need to understand that a skilled professional songwriter can accelerate your success as an already talented musician. These people are writing every single day, so their craft is really sharp, and it's the best songwriters who consistently get on the radio.
Well, what's interesting, I try not to think about the radio when I'm writing a song. I want people to love the song, and that means it might not be exactly thinking about the radio, but it's thinking about your audience and saying, 'I want people to like this song after it's done.'
So that what you tend to see is someone like a Rush Limbaugh, he's the classic case because he's the most successful, he didn't sort of like come out of his mother's womb with the highest ratings in the country.
I was in Washington, D.C., on the morning show, by the time I was 18, programming a station by 19, No. 1 in the mornings. I think I was making, I don't know, a quarter of a million dollars by the time I was 25.
I went from having 50 listeners to 50 million listeners.
I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.
'Nothin' on You' by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I'd been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.
Despite whatever commercial kind of success you might have or radio success, I don't want to do something just to get as many people as possible to listen.
If you can go out with your live show and turn people on to that, where you have that fan base that's religious and they're going to come see you when you're in that town, once your radio success is gone and you're not a mainstream guy anymore you can still go out and play your shows.
My mami and papi love my music. They're always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume - and turn it back down when it's over.
I made a dollar a day sweeping a laundry out. Then we made a record that was number two in Los Angeles. We got so excited hearing it on the radio that Carl threw up.
I love making music, but I also love making music that's on the radio. In some circles, that is considered less artistic. And I've always tried to resist those people that say the two can't exist at the same time.
