I'm obviously really opinionated, but as a producer, you don't necessarily want the person you're working with to try to impress you - you want them to just be themselves. Then you can edit or mess around with what they've come up with. But you have to allow the artist that space.

I was thinking that people have to believe you're crazy in order to take you seriously as an artist.

Broken Bells reminds me how much fun I have making music.

Going back and forth between wanting to be respected artistically and wanting to move people is its own challenge.

All I do is listen to music. It's a weird thing. It's like I have so much catching up to do. I've always been over my head. That's just the way I work best, you know. Like when you're studying for school you think, "I can only study when I have to study the night before." That kind of means you're lazy or you're a procrastinator, but for me with music it's a similar thing. It's like I've been over my head for most of my career so to speak.

In the end, I think musicians know that getting up in the morning and making music you love doesn't necessarily mean that you deserve billions of dollars or worship from anybody.

A big part of making an album is that you want to have enough material - you want to have enough stuff for people to hear and know that it represents you.