Dec 25, 2025
“I would advise any aspiring artist to read books, read poetry, and listen to the songs of great writers. Being able to play an instrument well and knowing something about theory is great, but there are a hell of a lot more good players than there are good...
Dec 25, 2025
I’m harder to please now. Your standard goes up. It’s increasingly harder for me to move myself. And if I can’t be moved by an idea, there’s no chance somebody else is going to be moved. But I don’t feel like it’s my job to pump out songs every week anymore. Now it’s...
Dec 25, 2025
You listen to music and use it to try to create something new, and who knows what’s going to come into your head. A song is a song. You produce a song, and at that moment when you produce it, that’s when you take it into a genre. Before you produce it, it’s just a...
Dec 25, 2025
About 20 years ago, there was this group of about five or 10 people who went downstairs after a party to a bar that had a piano. This woman asked me to play one of my songs that I hadn’t played in years [“Late For the Sky”]. I didn’t know it anymore, so she sat there...
Dec 25, 2025
“If what I do with my music—and my passion for so many different kinds of music and songwriters and musicians—if that inspires people to listen to Sippie Wallace and appreciate the blues, or appreciate Richard Thompson or Paul Brady or John Prine or Jackson...
Dec 25, 2025
I’m finally at a place where I can separate thinking about a lyric and really working on a lyric, versus just allowing something to happen and letting it be what it is. That’s the conscious versus the unconscious voice. It’s really easy to write pop lyrics. It’s...
Dec 25, 2025
A song happens whenever it wants to happen. If a melody strikes me, I’ll grab a guitar quickly and work it out. Sometimes it takes a while for the words to come, but I let those things happen on their own. If it happens right there and then, that’s great. I don’t...
Dec 25, 2025
I met Frank Sinatra a couple of times. I met him once when I was a kid and he patted me on the head. I was about 8 years old. I met him once when I was singing at his birthday party, for about a thousand people, I guess. It was a big concert where all these people...
Dec 25, 2025
Some people are born songwriters, but I was not one of them. I was a born singer and a born performer. To this day performing doesn’t daunt me in the least, but songwriting terrifies me. It’s the hardest thing I do. It took a very long time for me to figure out who I...
Dec 25, 2025
Verdine White: “What’s changed about our audience is that there are three different generations talking about Earth, Wind & Fire in three different ways. The older ones remember when they first started with us, they still hope we’re good, they hope we’re not as...
Dec 25, 2025
I’ve got a good musical memory, and I can recognize when somebody is capable of greatness. I can hear it. When you’re outside a person and have some objectivity, you can guide them to doing what they’re good at. I can listen to them for 10 minutes and say, “Stop doing...
Dec 5, 2025
“You Really Got Me,” for example, I first wrote when I was about 13 or 14. I originally wrote it more like a folk song about cotton pickers and things—my sister still has that tape somewhere. Then when we needed to record a single, I was playing it to Dave on the...
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