Pastoral Resources

Idol has pretty much taken me out of my recording and out of my choreography. I have managed to slip in some choreography jobs. And I've been writing songs for other artists.

There's a saying, 'It's easy to write songs, but very difficult to write great songs.' I'm going through that right now.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

I got about 6037 songs I wrote myself and I'm trying to get them on the market and I just wish people could hear them and stuff but they'll do pretty good.

It's great to be able to get up there now and do an hour or 75 minutes of songs they're familiar with.

The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital.

Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.

I can't be bothered anymore about giving songs titles.

Thinking about what songs are coming next instead of just relaxing, breathing and playing from my heart. Sometimes it can get to be almost like the enemy.

At the end of the day, they're happy if you do the obvious songs towards the end of the set and you've got to try and make yourself happy by doing certain songs at the front end of the set.

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.

I sang and wrote songs when I was 12 years old.

I said, other people can write songs, let's see if I can. So the first 400 or 500 wound up on the floor somewhere. Then I wrote one called Melissa.

I got tired of playing other people's songs.

Knowing what I knew about Russia, as much as I loved the music and was fascinated by the songs and the whole idea of it, I knew it would be a very lengthy and frustrating process.

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.

That's what I like to do, I like to make songs.

My next record I really just want it to be a collection of great songs, classic songs in a way.

Selfishly, I make music for me. I like to make music. I like looking for songs. I like working with interesting musicians. I like producing records. It's something I will always do.

Musically, I always allow myself to jump off of cliffs. At least that's what it feels like to me. Whether that's what it actually sounds like might depend on what the listener brings to the songs.