I really don't want to copy something to a great degree, but I love taking tiny ideas and putting them together.

It makes me happy to talk about some fundamentally good things.

People try to be more edgy, or write about that first explosive meeting between two people in a club, but not so much the long-term issues; I don't know how to write a song about teenage heartbreak anymore.

There's good stuff going on in modern pop music, but a lot of it is really materialistic and only about money.

I still love how Phil Spector turned teenage experiences into wonderful symphonies, but I find it a little more difficult to put myself in that place.

I really don't want to copy something to a great degree, but I love taking tiny ideas and putting them together.

One of the big things right now is the DJ is a spectacle, isn't it? You have the enormous light show, smoke, explosions, and fire. There's a dude with a USB stick playing somewhere in there, but the spectacle is created out of lights and lasers and whatever. The original idea of DJing - being a shadowy figure in the corner while people were having a party - is not the one that makes money and is massively popular internationally.