I've always hated narrative songs. I hate those songs where, basically, it's an unfolding of a story.
A good idea for lyrics and a melody to expand on.
The real challenge of writing songs isn't just writing a bunch of parts - like a verse, chorus, verse - but making something that flows together, that brings you back.
When people tell really good stories in songs, I really like it.
We didn't want to worry about the formula that has been implanted into our brains - this verse/pre-chorus/chorus format. When we were writing 'The Papercut Chronicles,' we had no idea about any of that. We didn't know how to count bars or how to write what's considered a well-formatted pop song.
I've written probably over 200 songs that have a verse and a chorus and that's it.
Every song, the title dictates the architecture of the song.
Melody is king, and don't you ever forget it. Lyrics appear to be out front, but they're not; they're just an accompanying factor. If they're good, you're really in good shape. Lyrics are written to be rewritten.
When you write songs, you're writing little bits here, little bits there.
I've always written pop songs. I tend to take inspiration from more experimental genres, like ambient music, but at the root of the song, it's verse-chorus-verse.
A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.
I always like to think that I make movies that are like Nirvana songs. They have a slow verse, and then they pop into high gear, and then they go back into slow, and then they pop into high gear again.
