You have made me smile again; in fact I may be sore from it- it's been awhile.
My my, the cruelest lies are often told without a word My my, the kindest truths are often spoken, never heard
I'm aware that I'm very fringe, and it's nice that way.
I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you.
With the a cappella groups, every voice is like one string on a guitar, one note on the piano, or one cymbal, and you don't have the luxury of falling back on anything.
And I twisted it wrong just to make it right Had to leave myself behind
A lot of 18-year-olds are like old men. They think they've seen everything.
The nature of honesty is that if someone has information or knows something about you that you don't want heard, then they have power over you.
If you're afraid they might discover your redneck past, there are a hundred ways to cover your redneck past.
Notes don't make music until you learn to insert silence between them.
They're into something that is too big to be expressed through their clothes.
And all I really want to say is you're the reason I want to stay.
Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not.
I feel like a quote out of context, withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see.
I do think that when you make repeated mistakes, it's usually because you're just not coming to grips with something.
The way I see it, there's only one melody for any song.
Billy Joel and Joe Jackson were both great, and they both play piano.
I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.
When someone really goes to tell you something about what they're thinking, they're going to wear that experience with them. That's what you have to share.
I have manic energy. What can be done about it? I don't know what to say sometimes. I'm professional in public, but I like to stay inside and be a hermit.
I think a lot of good directors listen to music while they're working. The songs just don't become a part of the film. They're replaced.
If I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend is sleeping with other people, I don't need to know who it is; I just want to know how she feels about it.
People learn at the rate they are going to learn.
The press is like any business. It's a group of really intelligent individuals that ends up being one slathering, one-eyed, drooling monster.
Even though I live in America more, I feel like when I go to Adelaide, that's when I get to go home.
You never know when you put out an album that's unique whether it'll get beat up for it or not.
Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I've got Joni Mitchell records, and they're great, and I couldn't possibly be that good.
I'm not really a strange person or anything, so if there's music I like, usually there's other people who like it too.
My idea is to play with the people who you know want to get it right. Then it's fun and easy to record, and you can get down to details, like taking out cymbals so the verse doesn't dwarf the chorus, something like that.
There is still some art in pop music. But it can't happen if you're not inspired.
The reason I stop playing songs is usually because I get sick of them, and then they find themselves back into the set list at some point.
Maybe this is wrong, but I feel like I craft my songs carefully enough that I still find that fifteen years after having written one, it still works for me - I'm not cringing.
Now that I have found someone, I'm feeling more alone... than I ever have before.
I'm older than I was, and I'm still washed-up, and I haven't changed my music one iota. It's just much easier to do this when people are being nice to you.
My job is to be some sort of music/lyric psychic, to figure out that that's the right song to not fight the lyric.
I'm really good at writing 'almost hits'.
Everybody knows it hurts to grow up... and we're still fighting it.
Rock and roll is - and should be - a kid's place.
The clock never stops, never stops, never waits. We're growing old. It's getting late.
Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.
I used to do this big rant at the end of some gigs with Ben Folds Five. The band broke into this big heavy metal thing and I started as a joke to scream in a heavy metal falsetto. I found myself saying things like: Feel my pain, I am white, feel my pain.
But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.
It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.
Next door, there's an old man who lived to his nineties and one day passed away in his sleep. And his wife, she stayed for a couple of days and passed away. I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong.
In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.
I don't leave my neighborhood. I don't go anywhere. There are four blocks I live in and there are two coffee shops, one at each end of the block... so I don't do much driving... Some people would say they never see me because I don't go anywhere. I stay in the blue state of Nashville, in my bubble.
The piano is just a different animal. It's expensive, it's big, it's heavy, and it doesn't fit in the mix easily. Everyone grew up with a piano in their living room, so rocking out on the piano was accessible - it wasn't an upper-class thing. Now pianos have become very much a piece of furniture.
I divorce myself from listeners who aren't tolerant of humor. I did notice universally that, especially when it comes to weight, people look in the mirror and get the angle just right, tell themselves it's all right, and then they go out.
