About 101
I started recording "101" when I realized exactly what kind of tonal atmosphere I want. It happens a lot that I write songs or jot down an idea, but then, to record an album, I need to know how I want it to sound over all. Most of the time in the study, I devote to the production; I work on all kinds of projects, so when I have a few free hours, I try things to test my ideas.
In "My Name is Trouble" I wanted to create a disco atmosphere, and sometimes the cheapest and rawest sound that you get when using an old toy keyboard is appropriate.
You can have fun with it and relay the sound through compressors to give it the exact form you want, but you know right away whether it's the right sound.
The song talks about the idea of gangsters; someone walks into the room and brings with him a whole mess of troubles. I like that moment in old Westerns, when someone from another town walks into the saloon, with a certain swagger and mannerisms, and you just know this guy is going to cause problems.
It's a mood that a person brings with him and it's obvious it's going to be bad. I experienced this - as the one causing the problems in someone else's life and also as someone who experiences someone else's problems.
In the stanzas of "Run with You" there's a country-style guitar and in the chorus there's a dramatic electronic atmosphere. If a note were a picture, this would be the textures and colors that I would need to explain a situation where you want to get up and run away with someone from the past, with whom you want to get away and do something forbidden.
A melancholy ballad of this kind is the closest thing to the songs I used to write; I figure that I'll always return to these melancholy ballads.
The song "All the Beautiful Girls" is a song I waited a long time to write. When I imagine it, I see before me a scene from New York in the 1970s, an urban setting, where there is a dialogue between a painter and his wife. They are in a basement studio, where he paints and they live. The song depicts the whole 1970s artists' scene. But the real emotion in this song is the sense of closeness to another person and empathy with his distress or suffering.
I experienced this story from both sides. I was once the wife and I was once the narrator but I was also the husband. "Sugar Mama" (the female version of an older, wealthy man who thanks to his money has a young and beautiful wife ) - I wanted to write a song that would be like the decadent atmosphere of Los Angeles, the roads and the sun, the successful women and the girls who want to be like them.
"Sugar Mama" is the opposite of a Sugar Daddy, and I thought this could be cool if done right.
I like to find poetry in a place where there's no poetry. The song has guitars in an environment where people are trying hard to be cool, and it's fun for me, because I don't write pop songs automatically.
I relate more to the inner side of music; I need the bass, I need the vagueness of the piano and I also have a need for lighter things. It was fun for me to do this song.
"She Won't Trade It for Nothing" is perhaps a song I wrote for my husband, but I'm not sure about it. I am well-acquainted with a very scattered way of life - a life of traveling to concerts, a life like that of sailors at sea, going from place to place with a need for a very strong connection to one place. People are willing to give up a lot of things, they are willing to make many changes in their lives, but they won't give up the one thing that is really important to them.
It's important to me to keep my legs are on the ground, because my spirit floats.
"You Were on Fire" tells of a dream I had. I wanted a song that talks about devotion but not necessarily religious devotion ... the moment when you see, even if just for a second, Jesus, or whoever, inside red flames and red lights. I think we all have such dreams and we put in someone else instead of Jesus.
I wanted this song to go to different realms; a dreamlike background suited it and perhaps an abstract one, and because of that I used a choir, because it reduced the bombastic quality. Maybe the dream was about my father.
"Blood on My Hands" is essentially a wonderful fantasy; I don't know if other singers experience this. It happens during a performance when the doors close and you are there with the people as if you are partners in a crime that night. Only they know what is happening. If you fall, if you are off-key, if you forget the words, if you just want to scream, if you decide to dance suddenly or if you just lose control, the people who are with you, they are witnessing. The song is a fantasy that somehow ends with blood ... an escaping singer who shoots at everything that crosses her path - fans, her musicians, the bar man. And there's blood everywhere.
"Song from a Tour Bus" has something very strong to it and yet there's something very vacuous about a concert tour. It's an experience filled with emotions. You want to give your best possible performance every night and you have to be full of energy and adrenaline. The audience responds in kind, you feel dizzy after the concert, but after a few hours, you're just a girl sitting on the bus and looking out the window.
"Strange Weather" is again cinematic, about longing/love/knowledge/leaving. What I tried to do is to create with the music every image and every breath in this "one-way dialogue."
It's still my story, perhaps more than the others. Sometimes writing songs functions as therapy; you write something and then you set it aside. This song chased me for a long time, and I had to record it."
Bible thumping
"101": A summary of sorts of the whole album, or of this chapter in my life. I always had an obsession with this number, 101, because the numerical value of my Hebrew initials is 101, and chapter 101 in Psalms is my favorite chapter in Scriptures. I am very connected to the poetry in Scriptures and the way its stories are told, even though I'm not at all religious.
On my concert tour in North America, there was a Bible in every hotel room. That's how I had the chance to read certain chapters.
Sometimes I think the Bible is totally messed up and distorted, and that there is too much blood and violence and everyone there is stoned, but the book is greater than any other book.
I thought about the idea for this song three years ago when I was in Taipei in a skyscraper called Taipei 101. After the concert, they took us in the elevator to the 88th floor, and we had to climb the stairs, floor by floor, to the top.
I looked down on Taipei and it seemed like a metropolis, urban and dusty; it could have been London, Paris or New York.
For a few minutes, all I saw was the lights and the cars. But I started a sort of countdown in my head. There were also some personal and universal moments in this. For me, they all have significance.
In "My Name is Trouble" I wanted to create a disco atmosphere, and sometimes the cheapest and rawest sound that you get when using an old toy keyboard is appropriate.
You can have fun with it and relay the sound through compressors to give it the exact form you want, but you know right away whether it's the right sound.
The song talks about the idea of gangsters; someone walks into the room and brings with him a whole mess of troubles. I like that moment in old Westerns, when someone from another town walks into the saloon, with a certain swagger and mannerisms, and you just know this guy is going to cause problems.
It's a mood that a person brings with him and it's obvious it's going to be bad. I experienced this - as the one causing the problems in someone else's life and also as someone who experiences someone else's problems.
In the stanzas of "Run with You" there's a country-style guitar and in the chorus there's a dramatic electronic atmosphere. If a note were a picture, this would be the textures and colors that I would need to explain a situation where you want to get up and run away with someone from the past, with whom you want to get away and do something forbidden.
A melancholy ballad of this kind is the closest thing to the songs I used to write; I figure that I'll always return to these melancholy ballads.
The song "All the Beautiful Girls" is a song I waited a long time to write. When I imagine it, I see before me a scene from New York in the 1970s, an urban setting, where there is a dialogue between a painter and his wife. They are in a basement studio, where he paints and they live. The song depicts the whole 1970s artists' scene. But the real emotion in this song is the sense of closeness to another person and empathy with his distress or suffering.
I experienced this story from both sides. I was once the wife and I was once the narrator but I was also the husband. "Sugar Mama" (the female version of an older, wealthy man who thanks to his money has a young and beautiful wife ) - I wanted to write a song that would be like the decadent atmosphere of Los Angeles, the roads and the sun, the successful women and the girls who want to be like them.
"Sugar Mama" is the opposite of a Sugar Daddy, and I thought this could be cool if done right.
I like to find poetry in a place where there's no poetry. The song has guitars in an environment where people are trying hard to be cool, and it's fun for me, because I don't write pop songs automatically.
I relate more to the inner side of music; I need the bass, I need the vagueness of the piano and I also have a need for lighter things. It was fun for me to do this song.
"She Won't Trade It for Nothing" is perhaps a song I wrote for my husband, but I'm not sure about it. I am well-acquainted with a very scattered way of life - a life of traveling to concerts, a life like that of sailors at sea, going from place to place with a need for a very strong connection to one place. People are willing to give up a lot of things, they are willing to make many changes in their lives, but they won't give up the one thing that is really important to them.
It's important to me to keep my legs are on the ground, because my spirit floats.
"You Were on Fire" tells of a dream I had. I wanted a song that talks about devotion but not necessarily religious devotion ... the moment when you see, even if just for a second, Jesus, or whoever, inside red flames and red lights. I think we all have such dreams and we put in someone else instead of Jesus.
I wanted this song to go to different realms; a dreamlike background suited it and perhaps an abstract one, and because of that I used a choir, because it reduced the bombastic quality. Maybe the dream was about my father.
"Blood on My Hands" is essentially a wonderful fantasy; I don't know if other singers experience this. It happens during a performance when the doors close and you are there with the people as if you are partners in a crime that night. Only they know what is happening. If you fall, if you are off-key, if you forget the words, if you just want to scream, if you decide to dance suddenly or if you just lose control, the people who are with you, they are witnessing. The song is a fantasy that somehow ends with blood ... an escaping singer who shoots at everything that crosses her path - fans, her musicians, the bar man. And there's blood everywhere.
"Song from a Tour Bus" has something very strong to it and yet there's something very vacuous about a concert tour. It's an experience filled with emotions. You want to give your best possible performance every night and you have to be full of energy and adrenaline. The audience responds in kind, you feel dizzy after the concert, but after a few hours, you're just a girl sitting on the bus and looking out the window.
"Strange Weather" is again cinematic, about longing/love/knowledge/leaving. What I tried to do is to create with the music every image and every breath in this "one-way dialogue."
It's still my story, perhaps more than the others. Sometimes writing songs functions as therapy; you write something and then you set it aside. This song chased me for a long time, and I had to record it."
Bible thumping
"101": A summary of sorts of the whole album, or of this chapter in my life. I always had an obsession with this number, 101, because the numerical value of my Hebrew initials is 101, and chapter 101 in Psalms is my favorite chapter in Scriptures. I am very connected to the poetry in Scriptures and the way its stories are told, even though I'm not at all religious.
On my concert tour in North America, there was a Bible in every hotel room. That's how I had the chance to read certain chapters.
Sometimes I think the Bible is totally messed up and distorted, and that there is too much blood and violence and everyone there is stoned, but the book is greater than any other book.
I thought about the idea for this song three years ago when I was in Taipei in a skyscraper called Taipei 101. After the concert, they took us in the elevator to the 88th floor, and we had to climb the stairs, floor by floor, to the top.
I looked down on Taipei and it seemed like a metropolis, urban and dusty; it could have been London, Paris or New York.
For a few minutes, all I saw was the lights and the cars. But I started a sort of countdown in my head. There were also some personal and universal moments in this. For me, they all have significance.
