I grew up in the time just when cassettes were waning and CDs were growing. And so mix tapes - and not mix CDs - mix tapes were an important part of the friendship and mating rituals of New York adolescents. If you were a girl and I wanted you - to show you I like you, I would make you a 90-minute cassette wherein I would show off my tastes. I would play you a musical theater song next to a hip-hop song next to an oldie next to some pop song you maybe never heard, also subliminally telling you how much I like you with all these songs.

The music you love when you're a teenager is always going to be the most important to you.

My sister is as responsible for anyone for giving me good taste in music.

I think I started writing because no one had ever told me you can write about the things you know in a musical. They don't have to come from some far off place.

I'm past patiently waitin,' I'm passionately smashin' every expectation, every action's an act of creation.

It was a real dream come true just to get the job [in Moana], and yeah, and we sort of got right to work.

It's hard to pick. I mean, I think the one that is most emblematic of the collaboration that occurred is "We Know The Way." That's the first song we wrote for the movie [Moana]. We actually got it written that weekend in New Zealand, so we're all in New Zealand, we're all absorbing this culture, and Opetaia [Foa'i] brought it in.