I wanted to make a very cohesive-sounding album. Anyone who has listened to me and brought me into their living rooms and their bedrooms - I am making this for them.

As an artist, expectations are basically your enemy. If you're truly making something to make it, then you're not thinking about anything else except what you're making.

People don't get that being a musician is a job, they don't get what the work takes. And that's just because you're living a dream, so everyone who's observing it from the outside can't really empathize with how much work it is because you're fortunate. And it's a kind of competition with yourself to stay away from all of the excess, whether it's booze or drugs or just the late nights with the addiction to watching the sun rise in some weird part of the world. But when you meet the other musicians, there's generally a spiritual exhaustion that you connect with.

You know and I know that as soon as it's done, you have to get it out there. You want what's best for it. And especially in owning a label, which some days is the greatest thing for me and in some days is my demise because you see the truth and the work that goes into things and you see things happen and you see things not happen, and all you want in this world of currency right now is popularity, that's it!

I suddenly thought about being backstage, and I think it shocks you to meet the people you shared your bedrooms with. And a lot of them either take themselves too seriously or don't know how to take themselves at all. But I wanted to be aware in a very sarcastic way that every song I've written has probably been written about 12-16 times before. And doing that makes it very hard for me to accept serious singer-songwriters in the world, the up-and-comers, the ones who are out there who let that define their every move, who live and die and breathe for it. It's a bit of a tragedy, I think.

Rules are what governs us as humans, but it was wonderful to meet a man who said "There are no rules. You gotta be what you gotta be and you gotta believe in it." I know that's a feeling I used to feel a lot at a younger age, and through the sense of responsibility and working with so many and taking on so many duties and actions, you lose if you don't stay on top of it. So that's what I love about this man, that there are no rules.

I didn't retire, I became irrelevant - there is a big difference.