I've been through a lot of ups and downs. I've been on both sides of it all, I guess. So there's not one specific event or thought that I'm dealing with or drawing from necessarily.

I want to surround myself with the people I care about and that has a lot to do with what love is. It's surrounding yourself with the people you do love and trust, and that kind of thing.

Look, one of the things that I know for sure is that none of us truly knows. That's it. It'll hit you later.

My point is, I don't see the need to eat animals. I love animals; besides the horrible stuff that's put in meat, I actually love cuddling with animals and petting them and stuff.

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.

Videos are tricky because stuff sounds amazing on paper and it seems like it's going to be this mystical experience and you're going to look back and go, "Wow, that was magic." But more times than not, it doesn't end up that way, so I never know what I'm going to get.

There's a bunch of songs that I call B-sides on the record that you could argue could maybe have some potential commercial success with another artist, but for me, they just felt really whack.