Kara DioGuardi Co-Wrote ‘Sober’ While Drunk

April 27, 2011

Howard asked Kara to discuss her storied songwriting career, so she sang a bit of ‘Sober’, a song she’d co-written with Pink. Kara explained how the lyrics came in a kind of “drunken game of tennis” from a simple prompt: “She had a title. ‘How do I feel this good sober?’ and we wrote backwards from that.” The ‘Sober’ session was so wine-fueled, Kara barely made it home: “I had to pull over. I think I had to nap for 45 minutes.”

Kara said the song was a personal favorite: “That girl is one of the most talented people I have ever been around. It was the best writing session of my life. And on my mother’s soul, the girl went into the recording booth and sang it three times and it was done…we all had goosebumps.” Kara credited the songwriting session’s success to chemistry: “It’s like a date.”

Kara said her most difficult session was writing the top line (melody and lyric) for Christina Aguilera’s ‘Ain’t No Other Man’ around DJ Premiere’s samples. Her most disappointing was seeing a record company force her pop song ‘Lost’ on Faith Hill: “It was too pop a song. It’s not going to fit in country…it didn’t live there. It didn’t survive there.”

She Pays Her Husband

Kara said her husband was servicing their properties (“He works hard. He digs ditches for the house.”), but Howard was confused, as the guy has no other gig: “You have to pay him. How do you pay your husband? What do you decide to pay him?”

Kara shrugged that he was paid like any other contractor: “He’s doing a job.”

Right now, his job is to help her conceive: “I’ve been having a lot of sex but no kid…I might adopt.”