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.

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.

I'm obsessed with the science of music. I'm obsessed with the way you can string notes together and they can do something, and you play the same notes in another way and they do nothing. How the essence within songs - within words, within lyrics - finds its place.

It's a weird situation, doing interviews. Nowhere else in the world can you talk about yourself and have people listen like they're interested over and over. Most people, if they talked about themselves for a half an hour, you'd go, "I'll give them a miss next time." So it's kind of weird.

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.

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 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.