You know, I'm unable to make those records where you just go in a studio and that's it. I think you can capture so much more on a record than just a particular performance on one day.

Everybody's looking for some kind of authenticity in music. Or some kind of truism, you know, "This is true!" And the thing about gospel music is, these people are singing about their faith. So it always comes across with, as authentic, you know? Gospel choirs put across this amazing sound but they're singing from the heart because they truly believe it. And I kind of have that faith, but I just have that faith in music.

I used to listen to so much doo-wop, and I've talked a lot about gospel music, but I realised a lot of that language came from doo-wop music. You know, "I Asked the Lord Above," "Heaven Sent Me an Angel." That's rock-'n-roll, and that's where a lot of this language is coming from. Also, I've said before that as soon as you start having a conversation with Jesus in a song you know you're dealing with issues of morality and how fragile it is to be human. It's a shortcut to putting those ideas across.

I just think there's an awful part of rock-'n-roll music where people kind of pretend they're young all their lives, you know? And they kind of live off past glories. Especially now there's kind of a trend where people are performing only their old albums, in their entirety, beginning to end.

Sometimes it's easier to make decisions when you know that you've tried things that are so wrong, you know, "OK, I don't go that way with it. I don't go this way with it." The way I work, I kind of have to go down all those wrong paths to know that the one I'm doing really is the one that is going to work.

In an odd way I thought I was lowering the bar for myself, in saying, well, I'll make a pop album. But in a way it's kind of harder to make pop music. It's like the more abstract you get with music, you get into that emperor's new clothes thing, where you can go anywhere, and just claim that your audience may not be prepared to go with you. But with pop music, I think everybody understands the form, everybody knows what it's meant to do. So I would say it's harder to write that kind of music.

When it's a pop song, I don't really want to do pop songs, but they exist and sort of come out by accident.