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.

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'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.

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."

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 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.

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.