I make YouTube viral videos all the time, and I made a video called 'Beauty and the Beat,' And as a strange, wacky coincidence, Justin Bieber dropped the song 'Beauty and a Beat.'
In real life, coincidences happen all the time. In novels, they are leapt upon with fury.
I don't think there is any kind of magic about what I do. All of the connections are there, somewhere in the subconscious or in the collective unconscious. If I let the elements speak to each other, then these coincidences will happen. And they do happen. They happen all the time.
When I was busking, when I was paying for petrol with silver coins or when I was sneaking into hostels so I could park my van up and sleep in it, I had the best time of my life.
We've always had this experience that things take long, but I'm 100% convinced that our principles will in the end prevail. No one knew how the Cold War would end at the time, but it did end. This is within our living experience... I'm surprised at how fainthearted we sometimes are and how quickly we lose courage.
I remember the '80s being about the Cold War and Reagan and the homeless problem and AIDS. To me, it was kind of a dark, depressing time.
I would honestly say the biggest thing for cold weather is a good face moisturizer with SPF. Winters are harsh, wind chill's real, and, a lot of the time, it's a really dry climate, and so your lips will crack, your face will start to get dry, your nose will peel; it's easy to get sunburnt, windburnt.
There are three reasons why I live in Scotland. First, I like silence, and you have to be a millionaire to buy silence in Italy. Second, I like cold weather. Third, in Italy I have too many relatives and know too many people, so I never get a quiet time.
One time, I gave Chris Martin a My Little Pony for good luck. He said, 'Oh, you should keep it,' but I was like, 'You guys probably need it a lot more than I do.' I said that to Coldplay!
I don't care if it's a Cole Porter song, or George Gershwin, or Lennon/McCartney, or Elton John, or you know, whoever, Bob Dylan. Great songs are great songs, and they stand the test of time, and they can be interpreted and recorded with many points of view, but yet still retain the essence of what makes them good songs.
We never thought we were writing for posterity, because at the time everyone assumed that all the great standards had already been written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein... The songs we were writing were supposed to be temporary things, of the period, like comic books.
And when I went to Houston, they had a conditioning coach by the name of Gene Coleman. And that was the first time I had gone to an organization that had a program with a weight room and designed specifically for pitchers.
I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.
I just love the people I work with so much, you know. It's an embarrassment of riches to get to work with Kristen Schaal and Mel Rodriguez and Mary Steenburgen and Boris Kodjoe and Cleopatra Coleman and January Jones, but then to get to bring Jason Sudeikis into the mix, you know, we're like brothers from all that time we spent together.
Colin Powell has said over the years that Saddam Hussein is like a toothache. It recurs from time to time, and you just have to live with it. At other times, he's compared Saddam Hussein to a kidney stone that will eventually pass. But he has never said, 'You have to operate and take out the kidney stone.'
I'd love to collaborate with Frank Ocean. He's one of my favorite artists of all time.
I love L.A., but I don't live there. I spent some time there when I was recording 'Kaleidoscope,' mainly working with some of the artists I collaborated with. The city and people in L.A. have a great vibe and the weather is always beautiful.
As I had collaborated with visual artists before whether on installations, on performance pieces, in the context of theatre works and as I had taught for a time in art colleges the idea of writing music in response to painting was not alien.
We spent a lot of time trend forecasting and collaborating on ways to design a fresh line of fashion-forward, affordable luxury.
It used to take me a really long time, and I used to not be able to write in the studio because I felt there was a lot of pressure to be perfect. The more I'm collaborating with other artists, the more I realize being in the studio is about catching a vibe.
