Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.

I liked getting the Grammy more than not getting it.

I don't want to sing songs and write songs that need to have images behind them that are of a specific time. The times we live in today - I mean, there's a lot to work with. But I think that if I was my age in 1975 or 1985, I would have felt the same way because that's what I gravitate toward.

There's only one thing that's certainAnd that's everybody, everybody's hurting

Artists are not going to put somebody new in the president's chair. It's all worth the effort; it all needs to be done. But I don't look at songwriting as having the ability to necessarily do that today.

Of course, I came up around music and fame, but this is still my first time experiencing it all. I'm still going through it like anybody else goes through it. But I'm still doing something I've never done before.

I see myself as a traditionalist. I like traditional things. I like things of substance and value that have been proven. Conceptually, as the songs started to come together, I followed that lead, which is the language I work in.