Gavin Rossdale says his biggest hits came from writing personal material, not chasing universal appeal. He dismisses the idea of writing songs for algorithms, calling it a betrayal of artistic expression.
If you went to work this afternoon to write a song and you said, "I need to write a hit." If I had attempted to write a universal record, I would've floundered. It was only by writing expressly about myself, deep down as far as I could go, that it became universal because I'm just another idiot human. And so there's a shared experience for all of us. More so than we probably can imagine. I'll worse you on that one. I've had people say to me in the studio, what's the best arrangement for the algorithm? I'm just like, you're kidding me, killing me, you're just killing me.
