You don't put out music unless you have a sense that people will maybe like what you're doing or you're standing for something artistically.

When I cruise around, I can't help but study people's faces and emotions and wonder why they're feeling the way they are.

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 would say it's always been in me to want to have victorious songs. I sort of want my songs to have a feeling of victory, but through a lot of pain. Like, you're 75 percent to the top of the mountain and sometimes you fall back to the bottom, but hopefully by the end of the record you'll feel like there's no mountain at all.

Trying to put music out there in the world is a pretty exciting, yet terrifying, thing and I've just been through the ringer.

You don't put out music unless you have a sense that people will maybe like what you're doing or you're standing for something artistically.

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.