I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.

I didn't even know the industry of songwriting existed. I thought everybody sang songs and they were only singing the songs that they wrote. So after I found out about songwriting in college, I was like, "Okay, I want to do that."

I find it hard myself to feel justified to sing in a very politically direct way about war or social conditions because I feel so ignorant of a lot of it.

I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage.

I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.

I've always been very politically interested from a very young age and I hadn't felt that was something I could begin to bring into my songwriting because I hadn't felt I'd reached the stage, that I had the skill with language enough, yet, to do that.

Maybe you're a singer or not, but what taps into the soul leads to the heart, and that's really what I came away with, with the starting point for the record being that I could speak as a human being and feel things very deeply.