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 just find that I enjoy the music that feels like there's a journey to the top of this mountain, then you're at the top of the mountain finally with this magical feeling, and you're stoked because you made it, and you're up there, but there's a little bit of sadness to think of all that you lost along the way to get there. I guess I relate and enjoy the path and the struggle very much.

I have a lot of questions and I don't have that many answers. So what better place to exercise those thoughts than the lyrics, I guess.

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 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.

I don't know that I can say what exactly love means to me because it would be hard to put that into perspective. But the older I get, the more I realize that you don't have to be around people you don't want to be around, and you don't have to be in a situation you don't want to be in.