“Rewriting really makes you focus. Haggling for weeks over a word. Just focusing. I tried all the vocals out before I ever went in the studio, and I’ve gotten pretty good at this, so that if I hear it in my head I ought to be able to sing it. But when we tried it out in the studio, sometimes I couldn’t quite get it right because, as I said, there’s so much rhythm going on in the words that is supposed to be working against the beat, and I could hear it clear as a bell in my mind but I couldn’t always execute it. Whenever I found that I couldn’t do it I didn’t start tearing my lyric apart because I knew it was OK, I just knew that it was me who couldn’t get into it, so we would keep at it until I did it right. It took hours sometimes, and it was maddening because I got so caught up trying to do it right that I’d lose the feel and the meaning of the words.”
(From the Rolling Stone Interview)