John Legend
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 song, and it could be any style depending on how you decide to mix it and arrange it. To me, when you evaluate songwriting, you don’t do it on a genre basis. You ask, “Is this a good song?”
From Performing Songwriter Issue 97
November 2006
Category: In Their Own Words