I’m not perfect, but I’m not all bad. You know, and it hurts me more than it makes me mad. We all do things that we don’t want told. And we all, you know, throw stones that we shouldn’t throw.
“I think ‘Shattered Image’ is a song that so many people relate to, especially in show business, because it’s more about how, well, you don’t have to be in show business for somebody to shatter your image or ruin your reputation.
But when I wrote that song, that was back during the early days when I was just really not used to people saying bad things about me, especially if they weren’t true. And some of them are true. And a lot of those stories in the tabloids, like I’ve always said, they’re based on some thread of truth, but usually it’s so frayed by the time they get done with it, you don’t hardly even recognize it.
But I don’t mind so much what they say about me as much as it hurts other people, and I hate that. I can handle it myself by saying what I say, doing what I do, and saying I don’t deny nor admit anything. But when they drag other people into it...
But that ‘Shattered Image,’ you know, it’s like ‘I used to sit for hours as a kid and dangle my feet from an old flat bridge, seeing myself in the water below, shatter my image with the stones I’d throw. A long time gone and a long time ago, when I shattered my image with the stones I’d throw. The world is cruel and people are cold. Now they shatter my image with the stones they throw.’
And I really think it’s like, ‘I’m far from perfect, but I ain’t all bad. And it hurts me more than it makes me mad. We all do things that we don’t want told. And we all throw stones that we shouldn’t throw.’
The line I love the best is, ‘If you live in a glass house, don’t throw stones. Don’t shatter my image till you look at your own. Look at your reflection in your house of glass.’
And, you know, don’t just shatter people’s image before you look and see what’s going on.”
Thank you for watching! Discover even more stories in Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, the first book in my trilogy about my life, music and career. Get your copy here.
