I just went to Europe, spent a year traveling, and then I came home with a finished album and said, "Hey everyone I'm back!" I gave everyone their lighters from Luxembourg, gave them the postcards from Italy and Rome, then said, "Hey look, I made a record, too" and played it for them. The general reaction was shock, because it was so different from what they've known me to do.

It's amazing when you find a photo of your grandparents when they were young because it's black and white and the care that they put into their appearance back then was so grown up and specific to that era.

I was grateful to be away from all that familiarity, to have a chance to do something anonymously.

I spent some time in France, visited Egypt and Mexico City. I hung out, biked around, planted some tomatoes. I did everything except wake up in a new town everyday. It was really boring. It's just life.

And of course, pop music is all about memorability and simplicity and positive messages and a little dash of joy.

I love storms and how the whole house shakes. When I was a kid, there would be lots of thunder and lightning storms, and they would knock the electricity out. We had this oil lantern that had been in my grandfather's homestead at the turn of the century, before there even was electricity. He'd bring it down off the top shelf, and we'd always play cards.

Any kind of anthemic song, for the most part, they're on the positive side of things. It's not hard to identify when a melody is just one degree too complicated or one degree too simple and where that line of pop memorability lies.