When your car is about to go off a cliff, it’s a weird time to be thinking about gas mileage and drag coefficients; better to take the right control action—look out the window and steer or use the brake until you’re back on course.

With the internet, things are so much more immediate. People taste-test things to see if they want to buy the CD

Its a combination of melody and lyrics, not one without the other. Its a confluence of these different elements that makes something powerful.

The Top 40 is geared toward 20 and under, not 20 and up. That's the audience I'm geared to

You can't make everybody love what you do, but you can know how great you feel doing it.

I like the simple 'I love your work' letters. You never get sick of people's appreciation. They think they're troubling you, but it's lovely people associate my songs with certain moments in their lives.

You're presuming too much by using the word legacy - presuming that someone is going to care.