Clearly, things are definitely changing in big ways as far as the way we consume music, listen to music, and what we expect from music.

There's a certain power in vague language, but I started to get more into the idea of really trying to have a discrete thought in the lyrics and to have songs that were about stuff - to try to make things more coherent.

I think certain people would be moved to be nostalgic about America's glory days, when the music set the tone for the cultural conversation and popular musicians had this absurd level of authority.

When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.

You think about, like, [20th-century classical composers] Alban Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern sitting around in some living room in Vienna and being like, "We are the end of music. We are the end of this tradition. Music is done."

It's a weird job because making music or writing a song is a personal thing... and it kind of has to be. You can always tell when people are faking.

You have to figure out as a band how a band becomes a business, and then you have to keep that business mentality separate from the creative one, which is good for the songs. It's always a work in progress.