I'm really attracted to music that sort of toes that line between pop and avant-garde, that pushes the envelope of what you can get in a pop song.

I always think about opportunity and how you regret the things you don't do.

I was talking to my grandpa last Thanksgiving. He pulled me aside and was like, "This Thanksgiving is the 150th for the Vaughn family in Chicago." I was like, "Cool, whatever," but I think when you have a culture like that, you should have a real appreciation for it. My family's been there forever and I don't want to leave.

All of the agreed-upon pariahs throughout pop-culture history put their identities into the thing we decry. And yet we derive our own identities from the act of hating. We connect on the things we are disappointed in. Some may argue that nothing in history gathers a crowd like complaining about Lady Gaga's meat dress.

When you make art, you get really invested in it. When art happens by accident and you were just along for the ride? It's way more fun.

In Fall Out Boy, we were all playing with our pop punk influences, so that was always within that kind of framework.

I am genuinely into soul, R&B and hip hop - all these genres that get slapped under the 'soul' genre. That spoke to me more than it did to my punk-rock friends. And punk spoke more to me than it did to my soul friends. I basically didn't fit comfortably in either world.