Pastoral Resources

If you can't play it on an acoustic guitar or a grand piano then it's not a song.

The bands that wrote the big, heroic rock songs - I really wanted to make a record like that.

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own.

A song that sounds simple is just not that easy to write. One of the objectives of this record was to try and write melodies that continue to resonate.

I don't set goals for myself too much, but I'm always trying to write that one great song.

Beck said he didn't believe in the theory of a song coming through you as if you were an open vessel. I agree with him to a certain extent.

I have yet to write that one song that defines my career.

I have been around for a long, long time. I didn't make it 'til I was older. I went through the period when women were not getting signed, particularly if you were writing songs that were lyrically propelled.

Great music is its own movie, already. And the challenge, as a music fan, is to keep the song as powerful as it wants to be, to not tamper with it and to somehow give it a home.

Yeah, I came in at the end of the Notorious album, played on about five tracks and then we went on a tour. Then we did another album, Big Thing, and then we started writing songs together in 1989.

I'd stop in the middle of a gun fight and sing a song.

We often don't think of them, we think of the great wars and the great battles, but what about losing a son or a daughter, or a girl losing her husband or vice versa? I think of the people who never got the chance to have the opportunities I had.

Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint.

When you do have songs where you're going to say something, some kind of statement about cultural or social stuff, that in general people love it. People love to be challenged in that way.

People try to keep their past, like kind of holding on to their past. Every Springsteen song talks about that.

The people at the record company had asked me if I could write a song about my life, my relationship with God, and where I'm from. Well, I can't write a song on purpose, my songs come in a moment of inspiration or desperation.

A lot of people think Christianity is about always being perfect. It's actually the opposite of that. It's realizing that we're all humans, and that's why God sent his Son to this earth - to save people.

I have four shelves covered with journals that I've written. Dad and I are writing songs together. I've probably written 100 songs.

I wanted to put a sheet in explaining what all the songs are about, but they didn't do it.

Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.