There's always a tension between wanting to write a really concise, instant gratification type song that gets under your skin the first time you hear it, and wanting to really stretch out. I think it's a healthy tension.

Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.

I put a lot into my records, and I won't release anything I'm not totally thrilled with.

Every time I get up in the morning, melodies occur to me and I start trying to shape lyrics to melodies.

The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration.

Correlation across replicated environments adds a whole new dimension of complexity of the environment, ... You would expect most application groups to have the same set of policies. In reality, you have differences in policies. That reflects back to that whole process of manual storing in the environment.

Most of the songs that I appreciate are lyrically vague.