I kept saying I got sick of listening to people's productions, like people who had no ideas, no songs, nothing to say but could still con people's ears into thinking those songs were there by the application of production. I kind of wanted my record a little more honest than that: "Well, this is us. We put a microphone on it. Here it is."

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 don't make records for this medium with which we're going to sell it. The selling of it can never be more important than what you're actually making. There's too much of that in the world - in everybody's world, not just in music. There's too much, "Are you hip to this kind of stuff?" "Hey, this is cool." "Are you hip to it, because this is what we're selling today?" I think it's bullshit.

There's always this talk of the industry of music and about selling records and whatever, but that ignores probably the majority of music that isn't about trying to sell itself, that isn't about being connected to any industry. There's a huge amount of music where someone just happened to have a tape recorder and turned it on or hit the red button while they were in the back of church or recording something in their front room.

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 think it's essential to make new music now, and to try and make epic records now, and not rely on what happened in the past.

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.