I listened to the radio, so I was influenced by everyone from Michael Jackson to Milli Vanilli. But thankfully my dad had a collection of Cat Stevens albums while my mom was listening to jazz.

I call it sacred geometry. When everything's just right and it feels really balanced, so that when it unfolds to the next part, you feel totally familiar and at ease within the song.

Equality and separation cannot exist in the same space.

I love writing songs with people, which is about really taking risks, throwing yourself over the falls and really seeing what you're made of and seeing how it sticks. Seeing how others react to it, and seeing also how it can become a melody and how it can really take off from your experience. It's a way of seeing life unfold on the page before me.

When I first started, my message was about joy, but I didn't really have the vocabulary and life experience to fully deliver it.

When you're writing a song and there are five people invested in it, it's easy for one person to say, 'Oh, this song is about this and that', and everyone has to hear the idea and see if they can do better.

New York City has the most beautiful women.