You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul.

My issue with the state of women became incredibly stimulated when I was visiting developing countries and it became obvious that women bore the brunt of so many things in society.

Imagine living in abject poverty and not knowing anything other than that for generations. Or alternatively, imagine being born into a really wealthy family, but there was no real love. Everyone's living these extraordinary, interesting lives whether they know it or not.

Charity is a fine thing if it's meeting a gap where needs must be met and there are no other resources. But in the long term we need to support people into helping themselves.

We need money to scale up the services that bring medicine to mothers. The United States government's doing that. There's a global fund that's providing money. mothers2mothers provides for mothers who come in who don't have education, who don't have support. mothers2mothers employs mothers with HIV, mothers who were patients recently in the very same facilities. We take those mothers who were patients who've had their babies, we bring them back, we train them, we pay them, to be health care professionals.

The very fact that the planet is probably unsustainable with all that we've done to it and are doing to it, it's an appalling piece of evidence. It shows our complacency, our lack of passion or inclination to be authentic and really understand our true values. It's consistently depressing, but nevertheless, we carry on.

I want people to understand me as a person with views, not just performing songs.