Question: Who said, "You cannot write a song any better than that, because that's how this kind of thing happens in real life."
About the article "Love the Way You Lie", section "Recognition".

Candidate passages:
"Love the Way You Lie" ranked in various best-of-2010 lists.
Claire Suddath of "Time" placed it at number five on her top-ten list and wrote, "That this song didn't come across sounding clichéd or tasteless is a testament to both artists' skill."
AOL Radio considered the song the best of 2010 hip hop music, regarding Eminem as imaginative and passionate.
It ranked ninth on MTV News' top-twenty-five list.
Its editor James Montgomery attributed the song's success to its theme and relation to the artists' past abusive relationships.
He concluded, "You cannot write a song any better than that, because that's how this kind of thing happens in real life."
"The New York Post" placed the song at second place on their "top 210 songs from 2010" list and regarded it as a "comeback club anthem."
In April 2011, Gabriel Alvarez of "Complex" magazine ranked it at number 100 on their "100 Best Eminem Songs" list, calling it a love song and praising Rihanna's vocals as beautiful.
"Love the Way You Lie" and its accompanying music video were nominated for five Grammy Awards at the 2011 ceremony, including "Record of the Year", "Song of the Year" and "Best Short Form Music Video".
It won the People's Choice Awards for "Favorite Music Video" and "Favorite Song".
Personal Quotes.
"Everything happens for a reason & if you stand right where you are now, & you look down & back to everything.
to all the events that lead up to you sitting in this room right now with me, you'll see where the order is & where you are right now is pretty amazing.
Where we all are, where I am right now is amazing".
"I always have this thing; if you write a really cool song, & then you put your leather pants on, you go out, and play, that's cool.
That's playing with your image.
If you put the leather pants on, & write a song to fit the pants, you're a total poser.
You're being more conscious of your image than your craft, or whatever you want to call it, & you really have to avoid that".
"When you find success, suddenly you have to defend your credibility against these idiots who don't know a thing about you".
"It's better to have a pocket full of regrets than to never have lived.
""It's such a thrill to perform live.
You never know if you're going to get hit with a bottle or a bra.
""Los Angeles is good and bad because it's full of people that are either running away from something or looking for something."...
"It's the most unintentionally funny city in the world.
""Don't ever let the truth get in the way of a good story."
According to senior producer Owen O'Brien, "Edge asks how much of your personal freedom are you willing to give up for a comfortable life.
It's not one girl against this police-state dictatorship.
It's more subtle than that.
"American TV series "Firefly" and film spin-off "Serenity" were cited by O'Brien as inspirations.
"Our other theme is you can't force other people to live by your rules and your society, even if your society is better," he said.
"In Serenity The Operative actually says, 'This is not an evil empire.
We just don't understand why you don't want to be part of our happy club.'
Obviously they take it too far, and that's kind of what happens in our game as well."
Meece grew up in Humble, Texas, with an abusive, alcoholic father.
He found solace in playing the piano, and in turn, the comfort he found in his instrument resulted in a passion that catapulted him to the level of child prodigy.
At age ten, he began touring as a concert pianist, and by 14, he performed with the Houston Chamber Orchestra.
Winning a nationwide talent show at age 15, David toured much of Western Europe, and in the following year, he had the honor of being the featured soloist to perform the 45-minute-long Khachaturian Piano Concerto with the Houston Symphony under the direction of renowned conductor, Andre Previn.
During his childhood, David not only performed, but he also composed his own music, most notably the song, "One Small Child".
Written at age 14, this song, now arranged as a modern church-choir arrangement performed at Christmaswas not released to the public until some 20 years after its creation on the 1990 album of various Contemporary Christian artists, "Our Christmas".
There he goes again.
The Grand Rapids Press (Grand Rapids, MI) (January 9, 2003): p.19.
(450 words) From Custom Newspapers.
Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of The Grand Rapids Press by the Gale Group, Inc. Byline: Terry DeBoer / The Grand Rapids PressThere's a double-meaning in the title of "There I Go Again," the new album from singer-songwriter David Meece.
"It does refer to ... here comes another Meece record," said Meece, who began recording in the mid-1970s.
"But from a personal and spiritual standpoint, it's about getting frustrated when we do the things we don't want to do, over and over again.
It's a multilayered title.
"The classically trained pianist ended a nearly seven-year recording drought with the release of contemporary Christian pop tunes.
The Texas native has more than a dozen Top 10 songs in various Christian radio formats and has sold more than two million copies of his 12 albums over a 25-year career.
A greatest-hits album ("Odyssey") in 1995 was his last effort until "There I Go Again," released last fall.
A mid-'90s corporate shuffle involving his record label delayed, then ended, plans for another album.
At the same time, a previously undiagnosed diabetes condition put him in the hospital with high blood-sugar levels.
Meece had to significantly alter his diet and lifestyle to keep the effects at bay.
"Over the next two years, my blood sugar level started dropping incrementally," Meece, 49, said.
"And I also dug into the Bible like I never did before.
"I found that when you live according to God's agenda, your stress level drops.
"The artist then signed a new contract with Grand Rapids-based Discovery House Music and began working with a producer in hopes of releasing an album in 2000.
But the oft-cited "creative differences" ended the relationship with the label, an affiliate of RBC Ministries.
"Everybody wanted it to work and wanted to do it, but when we got to doing it, there were some things that were problematic," Meece said.
"It was nobody's fault, but one of us was not going to be comfortable with it.
So we mutually decided not to go ahead, and that was OK."Eventually, Meece latched on to Aluminum Records and completed the project with producer Brian Hardin.
"There I Go Again" includes songs Meece has performed live over the last several years, including "Dancing with the Enemy" and "Raise These Arms.
"But the artist said there is one song that carries the theme of the entire album, as well as his seven-year recording silence.
The song, addressed to God, is called "Things You Never Gave Me.
""I used to thank God for opening doors for me and blessing me with things -- and I still do," he said.
"But now I thank him for shutting doors and saying 'no,' too.
When you're getting older, you look back and see the wisdom of God in that.
"Source Citation:"There he goes again."
The Grand Rapids Press (Grand Rapids, MI) (January 9, 2003): 19.
Custom Newspapers.
Gale.
LIRN.
Nov 8, 2007 <http://find.galegroup.com/ips/start.do?prodId=IPS>.
*http://wc07.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:3ifrxqq5ldke~T5 Allmusic.com: David Meece > Charts & Awards 1983 Count the Cost Top Contemporary Christian 61983 Count the Cost Top Contemporary Christian 61985 Seven Top Contemporary Christian 91986 Chronology Top Contemporary Christian 321987 Candle in the Rain Top Contemporary Christian 31990 Learning to Trust Top Contemporary Christian 71993 Once in a Lifetime Top Contemporary Christian 31995 Odyssey Top Contemporary Christian 33Chart information courtesy of Billboard.com © 2006 VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.
**David Meece interview http://www.cmcentral.com/interviews/2636.html 09-25-2002by Robin ParrishRobin: We've got to talk about the new album.
This has been a loooooong time coming.
So what can we look forward to?David: Well, you kind of have to know the history behind it, which I'll try to condense for you.
I spent 20 years writing, touring, recording, etc.
Made 12 albums.
Toured 200 days a year.
Plus wrote all of my own material.
So after a time, you get so that it's almost like a runaway train.
You're caught on it.
You do it and you do it and you do it.
Many times God, in order to get our attention, will cause us to jump off the train, which we have to do, in order to get our batteries recharged.
God has something to say to us, and a lot of times when we're so busy doing things for God, we don't have time to spend with God.
But anyway, my record company was bought out by a big secular company.
I woke up one day in 1997, and everybody I knew at the label was gone.
I mean, everybody.
They'd all been removed, or resigned, or whatever.
I found myself on a label that was virtually nonexistent, that was skeletal from what it was.
And this secular company eventually just eliminated the label altogether.
So I then began to just pray about it.
I was going, "What in the world is going on here?"
Because people that I had known for all these years were just eliminated, right and left.
Executives, promoters, other artists, it was a massacre.
So I looked at all the major labels, and pretty much all of them had also been bought out.
And the same thing was happening at all these other labels.
So, I began to seek God, rather than another record deal.
Which is ordinarily the last thing you'd think to do.
Because it's always like, "I've got to stay on the train, I've got to keep making records, I've got to get back in there."
A year is an eternity in the record business.
Anyway, I went over and talked to Roland Lundy, who was the president of Word at the time, who was a dear friend of mine.
I just got his thoughts.
Then I went over and talked to the head of Brentwood Music, another friend.
And I came away saying, "Maybe it's time I backed up again."
Instead of seeking the blessing of a record deal -- I mean, anytime you get a record deal to make music, that's a blessing.
But instead of seeking that blessing, maybe I should seek the Blessor.
So what I did was start praying that God would tell me what it is that He wanted me to do.
And I came to a place where I said, "God, if you want me to make records, I'll make records.
But if you don't, that's okay."
And that's a place where we need to be at.
But the thing is, ever since I was in college, I've been making records.
So it was really uncharted territory.
"What do I do if I don't make records?"
And I said, "Well God, tell me to do.
"Sometimes waiting on God to answer, or actually, rather, waiting on ourselves to clear out all the junk, all the distractions that we have in our minds so that we can hear, is very difficult.
But what happened was that God put in me this incredible hunger for the Word.
All of a sudden, I found myself just burying myself in the Word of God.
I wasn't making records, and I'd cut way back on my touring.
I found myself sitting and reading the Word six, seven hours a day.
Of course, my family thought I was having a nervous breakdown or something.
(Laughs.)
Because I'd always read my devotionals, I'd always done all that stuff, but I was a musician.
That was my main thing.
And all of a sudden, I'm sitting there studying this stuff like I'm in theology school or something.
One thing led to another, and I wound up spending probably two years where I did nothing but that.
Just reading and studying the Word.
I couldn't get enough of it!
And see, that's when you know it's a God thing -- only God can put that kind of desire in you, where you don't want to do anything but read the Word.
To make a long story short, in the midst of all this, God started really showing me things.
He really started dealing with me.
He spoke to me, in powerful ways.
God is the God of all comfort, Paul says.
Without God, there is no comfort.
You're tormented.
If you don't have God, you don't have comfort.
People spend their whole lives trying to find ways to comfort themselves apart from God.
For me, I realized this.
If you're going to go, though, from being comforted by God, to being someone who can really comfort others, there's a wilderness you have to go through.
I didn't realize this; there's a wilderness you have to go through where God will take your difficulties in life, your struggles, your pain, and will use it to comfort you, and then incorporate it into your character so you will become a comforter to others yourself.
From your pain, comes your power.
From your adversity, comes your advantage.
If you've been through hell and high water, if you allow yourself to go through that wilderness, if you allow God to use it to mould you and shape you, then through that you become uniquely prepared to minister in a way that no one else can.
And few people get to that spot.
I had to back up and stop making records for God to be able to do that in my life.
I didn't realize it at the time, but that's what had to happen.
From your misery comes your ministry.
How many years has it been, exactly?My last record came out in 1995.
So here we are seven years later.
Another thing that's very crucial when I talk about my new album, There I Go Again, is that every single song on that album was a song that I wrote somewhere in this wilderness.
It's not a negative experience.
It's not that at all.
The record will not come across as some kind of depressing thing, "Oh, my life is so hard."
No no no.
Quite the contrary.
But the songs, the lyrics are really deep.
Because what would happen in the midst of this wilderness experience, is God would give me revelation.
I would see things, spiritual things, that I'd never realized before.
Somewhere in this journey, in 20 years of being a Christian artist, I didn't have time to go through a wilderness.
I didn't have time, or so I thought, to allow God to help me grow to this extent.
It sounds like you're a completely different person now.
Oh, man.
I talk about who I was seven years ago, and it's like talking about someone else.
It's not that I was living in rebellion against God or anything like that.
Not at all.
I was seeking God with all my heart.
But it's just different now, with the revelation that He gives -- and He gives it to all of us, any of us who are willing to step back and say, "God, I'm going to obey You.
"The songs on this album came about in the midst of this struggle.
They're what God showed me in the midst of this.
You see, when I first started out in Christian Music, there was no Christian Music industry.
I was a student in college, where I became a Christian, and I just began to write songs about my relationship with God.
It wasn't for a record.
It wasn't to perform in front of anyone.
It wasn't for anything except that it was between me and God.
I wrote music just from the... purity of my heart, at that moment.
It was a fresh thing.
What you do over time, is you find yourself writing songs because you've got a new record deal.
Or you're writing songs because the market needs this kind of song, or that kind of song.
"Well, we need praise & worship songs now."
Oh, that's the big thing, everybody's got to write praise & worship songs now.
No no no.
You know what needed to happen, for me?
I needed to stop making projects, so I could get back to the place where I was writing songs from a pure spot.
Where I was just writing songs.
I wasn't going after a market or any particular musical style.
Just writing from the overflow of my heart.
A lot of these songs are me talking to God.
But they're really me talking to God, it's not a "me" song because I'm trying to get a crossover.
So why did you decide to sign with Aluminum Records?After having visited with my friends at the major labels, I didn't want to go with any of the larger corporations because of all that was going on.
So I went to my friend David Smallbone, who is Rebecca St. James' father and manager, and I just said, "God for some reason told me to talk to you about this, to see if there's some place you think I might fit."
Then he calls me up one day out of the blue and says, "Brian Hardin over at Aluminum Records is interested in signing you."
Just out of the blue.
In other words, what happened is that God opened the door, and I just fell through it.
I didn't know Brian, but it happened and there it was.
And people have said, "Why a little indie company like that?
Wouldn't you get better promotion from a big company?
"Creative freedom?Well, not only creative freedom, but because of this very important principle: God never uses impressive weapons.
When God gets ready to do something spectacular, He never uses the people or the things you'd think He would.
He always uses ridiculous things, He uses foolish things, to confound the wise.
So the fact that it's a little independent company, versus a major goliath, is irrelevant.
How did David slay Goliath?
With three rocks and a rag.
You know, He uses the jawbone of an ass.
He uses a little boy's lunch to feed the multitude.
So the fact that it's independent is absolutely irrelevant.
What's important is that this is where God led me.
So I'm just excited to see what's going to happen.
I can't wait to see what He's going to do.
***David Meece Interview (On Being, Feb 1990) from www.qbcm.org.au/resources/Preaching/Father%20Forgive%20Them.doc - You can’t argue with a drunk.
It was that way with my dad.
The slightest disagreement and he would become violent and very abusive and would beat my mom and this would frighten you to death.
David, what was it that actually set you free from the past - becoming able to really forgive your father?I don’t want anyone to ever get the idea that, you know, you do one, two, three and then your problem is solved because it’s a very, very difficult and painful process.
The problem was that I didn’t know how to totally forgive my father because the wounds and the hurts were so deep, so painful and so deeply entered into my mind and in my heart, and my resentment and anger were so strong that it was not something that was a simple thing.
Although it was a long process, I can cite you the exact moment in which I finally felt the burden of my anger lift.
I was sitting in a motel room alone after a concert and for some reason my father was on my mind and I was just sitting and weeping for a long time.
And I just began to pray that the Lord would lift this burden from me and would somehow help me to really forgive my dad, because I didn’t want to hate my father.
As I looked over in the closet of that room in the dark it was almost as though I saw an image of my father.
Shocked as I was, for the first time I didn’t see my father as the abusive adult alcoholic, but as a little boy himself.
I know this sounds strange.
I saw a little boy who was himself crying, who himself had been abused and hurt and was just crying out in anguish and resorting to the only way he knew to soothe or numb the pain, and that was through alcohol.
But the miraculous thing for me was that I saw for the first time the hurt that he must have been feeling, his conflict, struggle and pain over his own worth.
I found myself starting to cry for my father and weeping.
I mean the kind of crying where you can’t catch your breath.
I must have sat there for hours crying for my father, wanting so much to just be able to put my arms around him and tell him I love him, which is something I can’t ever remember doing.
Of course he was not living any more so it wasn’t possible, but the Lord was able at that moment to just hand me that wonderful forgiveness and I’ve been released from my resentment.
BillboardSeptember 4, 1993BYLINE: by Bob DardenSECTION: ARTISTS & MUSIC; Gospel Lectern Pg.
39LENGTH: 574 wordsLONGTIME CCM FAVORITE David Meece's latest for Star Song, "Once In A Lifetime," looks like it'll be the best-selling project in his long and storied career.
But what makes "Lifetime" -- like its predecessor, "Learning To Trust" -- really interesting are the lyrics.
A few years ago, Meece admitted he'd come from an abusive, alcoholic family situation, and that the lyrics in "Learning To Trust" were about dealing with being an adult child of an alcoholic.
One of the most powerful songs on the release is "Going Home," an account of his first concert back in his Texas hometown after his painful admission and counseling.
"When I did the concert, I took my counselor and wife Debbie with me," Meece says.
"They were going to keep me from chickening out.
There was a real temptation to do a good show, but not really talk about the issues of the past few years.
It was difficult enough to go back home, but to get up on a stage in front of an audience of friends and relatives -- people who knew me growing up, but never knew I was being abused at home -- that worried me.
"Still, there were some things that needed to be said, some people who needed some encouragement, some people who have faced the same struggle and been forced to keep the same secret.
Nobody knew what I was going through then, and it would have been an incredible encouragement to know I wasn't alone.
I had to tell these people they were not alone.
I was the first one to break the silence in my family.
It's a scary place.
"It was from that (very successful, incidentally) concert, that Meece gathered the lyric seeds that would eventually become "Going Home.
""It helps me remember that our earthly home is only a temporary place," Meece says, "that our real home is where our heavenly father is.
Going home forces us to face the ghosts of our past."
After hearing about Walker, James Stroud flew down to Beaumont, Texas to meet him and see his show.
After being "completely impressed", Stroud brought Walker to Nashville to record demos and then signed him to Giant and they began work on the debut album.
Stroud revealed, "Clay is very consistent, and that's pretty rare in such a young act.
He's one of those artists who, when he sings and you hear him going down on tape, you just know.
I knew it with Clint , and I could hear it with Clay."
Walker explained the meeting in "SUCCESS" by saying, "I finished the last song, chased Stroud to his limousine and asked him if everything was OK.
He said yes and that he would see me in a couple of weeks to start recording an album."
In an interview with the "Los Angeles Times" Walker said, "It was frustrating that I wasn't getting a contract, but I never doubted I'd eventually get one from somebody.
That's because my father taught me something else too--to have incredible confidence in myself."
Walker told "Country Song Roundup", "The songs that I write are normally either a true life experience, or they're things that I've witnessed from other people, friends or family.
When you write, you become vulnerable.
If you're gonna be true to yourself and write what you really feel, that's what you have to do, you have to put down on paper exactly what you're feeling...
I make myself very vulnerable because I open up my thoughts and they could be criticized, which can be painful, or they can be accepted.
Walker was one of several musicians including Tracy Byrd and Mark Chesnutt who came from Beaumont, Texas when his debut album was released.
He told "The Spokesman-Review", "Beaumont is a goldmine for talent, I'll guarantee you every label in Nashville could go down there for a couple of months and find at least four or five entertainers."
Walker also stated, "I'm a lot more influenced by Haggard than anyone else.
I like those powerful ballads and two-steppin music.
I love swing too, but it's probably that competition thing again."
Walker told "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette" in addition to Merle Haggard, "My influences were Hank Williams Sr., George Jones, and Charley Pride - the kind of country my dad liked, the kind I grew up on.
I'm convinced traditional country music will come back more and more.
After all it's the real thing.
It's honest, and it's not just a sound, it's a way of life."