I hate the pigeonholing that's happened in the music business in the last 30 years.

I am a writer - that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.

Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.

I am at my core a singer/songwriter a la James Taylor or a la Billy Joel. It's not that I don't want to work with people, but I do just love doing my own thing.

I just do what I do and hope it's accepted by the public at large. It's different from when Marvin Gaye and Stevie revolutionized what music was 25 years ago. Now there's all this technology that's available to everyone. It's tough to be ahead of anyone.

It's just exciting to be part of something that is brand-new.

I watch my contemporaries, and they love to live in the studio and I don't. I have a life. I treat it as a 9-to-5. I try to create something new every day, and then I get on with my life.