Recording - August 2013 - 51

AUGUST 2013

TAXI Road Rally 2012

Tim Myers Interview, Part 2
Interviewed by Michael Laskow
Our VP of film and TV Music was in NY a few
months ago meeting with ad agencies. He
called me after a couple of meetings and said,
“They all want Tim Myers… ‘just find us stuff in
the Tim Myers vein.’”
Tim left the band OneRepublic in 2007 to
become a solo artist. His songs have been in
countless TV shows and commercials. Here’s
Part 2 of his interview at the TAXI Road Rally in
November of 2012.
We were talking before we came onstage, and
you said that about half of what you write is cowriting with other people, and that you reserve
the other half, more or less, for yourself, so that
you can just do what’s inside of you. How is your
approach different when you sit down to write
for you, versus writing with a co-writer?
My method is keeping it 50/50 between writing just personally by myself, and writing
with other people. I just wrote a batch of
songs with Meiko, who I absolutely love. She
is an insane lyricist and melody writer, and
she is so fast. And you’re able to grab new
ideas, and maybe a new approach that you
would take. It’s really cool, because then you
are able to get a different sounding song, and
maybe a different outlook on a song, and
you’re able to collaborate together, and
you’re able to have some differences of view,
which is good. Then, writing by yourself, you
are able to really just… All you have is yourself to critique.
Are you a good self-critic?
Sometimes. It’s a tough thing, you know.
Having somebody else in the room can be
better, because there are days where you kind
of feel stronger about critiquing yourself, and
other days you feel completely lazy, and
you’re like, “Oh, that lyric will work,” and it
really doesn’t, so you kind of need somebody
there to say, “Tim, that’s not very cool. That
lyric sucks,” and that’s good. So it’s hit or
miss as far as days when I work by myself.

Tim Myers (right) thinks something TAXI’s Michael Laskow said was funny. You need to read the interview to find out!

But I think every individual has their own fingerprint of how they create their art, and I
think it’s good to use your fingerprint and let
people see what you do. And then it’s cool to
mix it with other people too.
How do you come up with topics and lyric theme
ideas?
I think topics are extremely important. When
I first started writing, I wasn’t that huge into
topics, it would kind of just pour out. You
know, whatever comes out: “Oh, that lyric is
cool; maybe I’ll run with that.” As a
songwriter, I find it a lot better if I go in with
a vision for the song. I want to write a song
about a new “My House” song, and I want to
write a song about how my block is the best
block, and it’s a party and all my friends are
coming over, and I’m gonna write a song
about that, that seems like a good idea, and I
have some lyrics. And then, being able to go
in and have forethought of how you want it to
sound, and then sitting down and doing it is
a good way. I don’t write all my songs like

that, but I find that having a good strong
topic can be a really good way to approach a
song.
It sounds like you’ve taken the topic, and to
some degree, you’ve turned it into a little story
already before you’ve even sat down to craft the
song. So you have a roadmap to work from.
That’s pretty cool.
How do you write with such universality? I’ve
listened to so much of your stuff over and over
since you hit my radar. You are so unbelievably
universal in your lyrics, in your appeal. You’re
talking about stuff that everybody in the room
can relate to, but you say it with such incredible
simplicity. You write in a very humanistic and
conversational way. Do you do that consciously,
or does it just come naturally?
It’s a tough thing. I mean, I think a lot of it is
subconscious, and I think there are times
where… I’d probably say it’s more
subconscious than conscious. Because, like I
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