Going in and out of a song, you know you might just be good enough to improvise a little bit when you’re playing live when you haven’t recorded a song, but then you get a chord and you say, oh, that little bit that I’m playing there, that doesn’t fit quite right, you know, or there’s something missing in that chord. It’s like putting a microscope on the song, you know, and polishing it to the way that you wanted, that’s what I think. I think things like … there was one chord this time, and we’re using good guitars, but nothing sounded right. Slightly out of tune. As you move from the top of the neck to the bottom of the neck, you’d never have noticed it when you were playing live, but when you’re recording it it becomes so so intricate that I think it’s a great way to get into the song

It was really a good way to audition, because it’s more of what I think the experience of auditioning should be, which is more exploratory, not a presentation. You’re in the room with the director, so you may as well work, and he may as well direct you. That’s what we did.

There’s nothing that I would call ordinary audition about this at all. It doesn’t really.. It’s a curious thing that will be very difficult to explain. Somebody asked me, “Was it as though your hand was moving?” No. I wrote perfectly voluntarily in response to…I call it a voice, but “a voice” has sounds...or sounds as though it has something to do with hearing. And I didn’t hear anything. I think it’s the sort of hearing that you can’t really describe. It doesn’t have anything to do with ears, or waves hitting a drum or anything on that order. I don’t really know, I think maybe I’m using the wrong word when I say “hear.” I sort of recognized it, it was very rapid, I could even....if I didn’t catch a phrase, I could sort of say, “Would you mind doing that again?”

I personally love auditioning. It's not just about that part: it's about getting to meet new people and really introducing myself to them - getting my name out there more than getting just that project.

Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.

You want there to be moments [in a song] where something unexpected hits you. They’ve done studies on this. What is it in a song that makes people cry? What is it that moves you? It’s something unexpected.

…It’s, you know, the words to the song are your script. You have to bring the correct emotion to every word. You know, if you sing it pretty – a lot of people that cover my songs will sing it pretty – it’s going to fall flat. You have to bring more to it than that.

There is no formula to it because writing every song, for me, is a little journey. The first note has to lift you and make you go, 'What's this?' You play C, but why is it that one day it leads to G and it didn't yesterday? I don't know. It's everything. It's the walk you take in the morning, it's the night before, the meeting with people, landscapes, the chats, all of that evolves in some way into melody, but I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm dealing with the unknown all the time and that is exciting.

What I do when I write is that I'll do a raggedy, rough version just to hear the chorus, just to see how much I like the chorus. If it works for me that way when it's raggedy, then I'll know it will just work... Listen to that, that's at home. Janet, Randy, Me... Janet and I are going "Whoo, Whoo... Whoo, Whoo..." I do that same process with every song. It's the melody, it's the melody that's most important, If the melody can sell me, then I'll go to the next step. The idea is to transcribe from what's in your mentality onto tape. If you take a song like "Billie Jean," Where the bass line is the prominent, dominant piece, the protagonist of the song, the main driving riff that you hear, getting the character of the riff to be just the way you want it to be, that takes a lot of time. Listen, you're hearing four basses on there, doing four different personalities, and that's what gives it character, but it takes a lot of work.

I have a sort of thought process I go through. And what I normally do with my accompanist is that we will talk through the whole show beforehand. You go through every song and we say, oe be careful of that part, and that part and remember to do that there and so on. You get all those things out of the way and it’s filed in your brain, so by the time you walk on stage you actually do it for the second time

Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite, it is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with one’s vulnerability, one’s perilousness, one’s smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.

A BIG PART OF SONGWRITING, like all writing, is editing — distilling thought down to essentials. Novice writers often hide behind filigree. In many cases the artistry is in what is unsaid. As the old saying goes, an iceberg moves gracefully because most of it is beneath the surface.

To be able to interpret a piece, I have to fall in love with it. First and foremost, it must fill me with emotion so that I may do the same for those listening to it, even when I’m not composing the music or the lyrics, if I accept to sing a piece, it is because it reaches my heart and at that point it becomes a part of me, it’s my own.

Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing ... you just go out and have a play over it, and see what comes, and it's usually — mostly — the first take that's the best one, and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter.