itsaysrec: Last year I was trying to come to terms with the idea that I’m a songwriter. I&rs
itsaysrec: Last year I was trying to come to terms with the idea that I’m a songwriter. I’ve gotten into country music, which I never really had a connection with or understood before. But someone like Townes Van Zandt is amazing– that’s what music’s all about, when you hear something and you don’t really have a choice but to think, “Oh fuck, all right, I’m going there then.” That’s what I got with his records. Also, I read this story about Iggy Pop where he said there was a TV show he used to watch when he was young, and the guy would ask kids to write letters into the show, and the letters had to be less than 25 words– and he applied that to writing “No Fun”. So, since we always do songs with a thousand words, we thought we should try one that had less than 30, which turned out to be “Brick by Brick”. But I got the drummer to sing it because it seemed like the right thing to do. That song introduced us to a new side of ourselves. Even though it is dumbed down, we know it, and it’s got a sense of humor; it says “I wanna rock'n'roll” like three times, which is hilarious. There have always been jokes all over our songs; I originally started writing lyrics to make my friends crack a smile, which is difficult. “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” is like one big fucking gag. I know my lyrics might be weird to some, but they’re not like that to me because I know where they come from– I know the secret. Part 1 | 5-10-15-20 Interview | Photo by John Goodridge. -- source link