I don't mind him not talking so much, because you can hear his voice in your heart; the same way you can hear a song in your head even if there isn't a radio playing; the same way you can hear those blackbirds flying when they're not in the sky
Even now, when you get love, you see Radha. Become Radha and be saved. There is no other way, Christians do not understand Solomon's song. They call it prophecy symbolising Christ's love for the Church. They think it nonsense and father some story upon it.
It's very cool for me to be able to get in an airplane and fly for fourteen hours and show up in a place I never thought I'd ever be and have kids in the same room singing these songs I'd written so far away. To me, that's so surreal.
I've always felt that the game itself is pretty much a melody and I am there to provide the lyrics. You want the lyrics to match the melody, because if you are composing a song or recording a song, it's cacophonous if they don't match.
I cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.
In fact, after Donald Trump won, some of the relief of finishing record was to turn off all the politics for a while. There were some songs that had more of the political stuff that we just decided to wait on and put aside. A few weeks after the election, I stopped watching cable news and just unplugged. My way of dealing with the new situation we're in was to just work on something that I care about.
Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.
Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb." So I piped with merry cheer; "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped; he wept to hear.
You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?
Often for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, "I could sing that song. I've got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs; it is actually important to do songs they're familiar with. Also, I love those songs. In a way, I think I've changed people's perceptions of what a cabaret show like this could be.
Truth is, you make albums, and some of those songs are hits, and some of the greatest hits albums have songs that weren't hits. You have a career, the reason why we're still around 10 years is that we do have successful songs.