I made a decision at some point to live a nontraditional life. I've become like, the opposite of a consumer. I just want freedom. I don't want stuff. I don't want clutter. I just want to be able to move freely. I want to be good to the people I love. But I don't want stuff. I just want, you know, love and big ideas.

Sometimes people come up and say, "You have this line in this song and it meant a lot to me." You don't always remember that line as the one. You're putting part of your human being on the page so people are going to have different responses - the other humans are going to connect with different parts.

Before I had a driver's license, and I lived in the suburbs of Minneapolis and went to high school and came home - I could ride my bike around or get a ride from my parents, but my world was pretty small, limited. Like anyone at that age, I only knew things I could get to.

There's somewhat of a real fascination with American bands and American mythology in London, so I think we've tapped into some of that. Maybe because of the way the press works or whatever, they have extremely knowledgeable music fans over there. People who will sit there and talk to you about some record that came out in 1967 out of Memphis that you've never heard before.

There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts.

I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

There's somewhat of a real fascination with American bands and American mythology in London.