Corey Taylor Discusses Lyrical Themes on Slipknot’s Next Album
Corey Taylor said something in a recent interview with Music Week, and you know what that means: we are obliged report on it!
The interview was conducted late last year, but Music Week has decided to share a previously unpublished portion in which Taylor sheds some light on lyrical themes and writing processes for Slipknot’s next album, which the band is recording right now. Here’s the excerpt:
What has been inspiring you to write for Slipknot’s next record?
“I can’t go into it too much because it deals with a lot of my personal life, but the last few years have been really tough for me. With the exception of my kids and my bands, it’s been a dark time for me. I didn’t relapse or anything, but it was just the depression that I was dealing with and the anger that I was dealing with that was consuming me. I had to get myself out of that situation, and now the lyrics I’m writing for the Slipknot album are all about that period of time, basically the last five years of my life just trying to get my head around everything, and moving towards the happiness I remember.”
Are there any governing principles you have when it comes to writing lyrics, or set ways of doing it?
“My mind is so fucking all over the place it’s not even funny half the time. For me, the quest has always been the perfect lyric, that perfect turn of phrase, that perfect set of stanzas to sit there and read over and over and be so delighted and tickled that you wrote them and so proud. You know, I’ve come close a handful of times but I don’t think I’ve written the perfect thing yet, but that’s why I keep going for it, I keep chasing that. That’s one of the reasons why I also try to write in so many different genres, I never pigeonhole myself into just rock and metal. I’ve branched out, I’ve done stuff here and there with other bands and genres, to put my ego in the backseat and sing other people’s lyrics and try to find meaning for myself in those lyrics.”
Was parking that sense of ego something you had difficulty with at first?
“Well, you grow into it, I think as you get older you feel more comfortable because you have done the work, the work is there. If you’re a younger man and you’re still trying to get through and still trying to crack the code or crack the surface, it’s tougher to go with that. Luckily, I was at a point in my career where things were going pretty well. The first time I ever sang someone else’s lyrics was Apocalyptica when I did I’m Not Jesus, and they even offered me to re-write stuff and I was like, ‘You know what, I know the background of what this song is about because it’s about child abuse,’ something that I know first-hand about from when I was growing up. So, I was like, ‘You know what, I respect the lyrics, I respect what’s going on, and it’s really good, so there’s no need for me to change anything.’”
Elsewhere in previously unpublished portions of the interview now available at Music Week, Taylor talks about juggling his work in both Slipknot and Stone Sour and what motivates him to keep going with both. Read that here.
[via Kerrang!]
