Member Since: 8/4/2012
Posts: 343
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John Mayer talking about Taylor recently
Quote:
I’m just downright quaint if you’re a songwriter and people are trying to wonder who the song is for. Now this is where it got weirder… I can’t say it’s a new thing that anybody wondered who a song is about. That’s a hundred year question. ‘Who’s that about?’ ‘Who’s this about?’ The weird little twist in it in the last five years is, ‘Who is this song for?’ As if the song has one intended recipient. As if we don’t have emails or phones. That we’re all sort of in laboratories now with broken hearts, wringing our hands together going, ‘WAIT UNTIL THAT ONE PERSON HEARS THIS IN THE CAR!!’
It would be a gross abuse of talent to say, ‘Well, yeah, I have millions of fans that I love and can’t wait until they hear my new record but, out of the way for a minute, I got a message to send!’ I don’t lob songs. I’ve never in my life written a song for somebody, or to somebody. ‘For’ means that there’s a ‘to’ and a ‘from’. And that the world becomes a spectator to these two people - the writer and the listener. So that’s where it’s become very interesting for people and I feel I’m in some way protected, at least in this conversation. (God knows as soon as it leaves this conversation, it’s open for anyone to sling arrows at it!)
I think people are intrigued by two songwriters who have, in people’s minds, this colored history in some way that goes beyond just being songwriters together. People are very intrigued by the idea that these two songwriters will forever be writing songs back and forth to each other."
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http://redprincess.tumblr.com/post/6...e-a-songwriter
Quote:
"It’s a different time… You could be considered an old fart for saying, ‘Why can’t people just listen to the song?’ It’s actually not really a disclaimer, it’s kind of an explainer. In saying that, I want to embrace it - if that’s the way people like to have music introduced to them, taped to a little nugget of BS, that’s sort of the method of delivery now for information where I come from. If you’re not hearing something based on a controversy or based on a debate or based on something polarising, you may not hear it.
People need an added value, especially on the internet where there has to be another multi-media facet to it. You can’t just put a song out and go, ‘Here’s John Mayer’s new song called Paper Doll. Listen to it.’ People need some other manner of intrigue. The narrative or propulsion for a product now has to be some other head-scratching, nail-biting intrigue. ‘Click and see what you think!’ It’s no longer, ‘Do you like this song?’ It’s, ‘Do you think there are nefarious underpinnings?’
And if that’s exciting for people… I don’t wanna tell anybody, ‘Hey, don’t do that!’ That’d be like me saying, ‘Don’t listen to it on Spotify! Only listen to it on Pandora!’ If someone gets into a song, and they want to get into the lyrics, and they want to get into the tenor of the verse and the vibe of the chorus and that stuff … It’s like, ‘Would you rather people not think that and not hear your song?’ I dunno, that’s the way people listen to music now, is to wonder where and why and how and look into the personal life.. I don’t know if it’s the exact opposite but it has nothing to do with what we do as musicians when we’re in the studio or on stage."
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http://redprincess.tumblr.com/post/6...-considered-an
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