My point is I'm kind of an outlier. For whatever reason, the success still blows my mind - that I'm able to talk to people about the music I've written.

I really love music and I want to make it better the best I can.

I never wanted to do music to get girls, right, to get popular, or anything like that. I really love music and I want to make it better the best I can. I can tell when something's real, or when something's put together. I can just feel it. So I'm my own worst critic and harshest critic and I just want to put honest music out there.

I just find that with music I've always felt a sort of comfort.

I never try and force-feed any song idea or lyrical message. It's really what's on my mind and what comes out of me. And a lot of these lyrics are metaphors for specific life situations that I've been through, and in most cases, the struggles. Something about human beings wearing sadness heavily on their sleeve inspires me to make something uplifting about the situation.

I like to write pop songs and the stuff I write is fairly poppy, so I thought maybe my lot in life was to write pop songs for people. It never felt right writing songs for other people to sing, though.

I've always found it pretty difficult to write a happy song. Since I was a kid, when I pick up my guitar it's been hard for me to write some sort of bubblegum lyrics. It's not really ever been my route.