I've been too productive for too long, and despite what anybody wants to strip away from me, I am influential. I am.

When I've tried to reinvent the wheel, I get bashed for not doing the familiar things.

You could have a zillion Facebook followers. Those people don't buy records. It's about a hundred to one...Record companies, they don't have any money so they see social media as the free marketing...So,...'Billy, light yourself on fire and stand upside down, and that'll market the record'. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I don't think people by records because of anything that happens on Facebook. They buy records cause they're friends say 'I bought this record and I love it'.

In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.

I created a paradigm by which I could succeed, and up until recently it was the only way I could do it. I could not take the brunt of standing in the light of my own work. There was a Faustian bargain I could not make. I could have you mock me for wearing funny clothes that I could deal with. But I couldn't deal with actually standing in the light of my own musical power. That's the difference now. It's like, okay, no more of that, you're done.

Do I belong in the conversation about the best artists in the world? My answer is yes, I do.

That was a terrible Super Bowl, I have to say. I mean you got the big Peyton Manning walk off into the sunset win, but what a shnoozo.