I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.

The easiest thing I do is assignment songs. They tell me what they need me to write. I can do that fairly quickly. Writing for an orchestra is difficult. Writing songs [on your own] is most difficult of all. Though [writing for] the orchestra is close.

If getting on the radio was a major motivation, I'd be one of the worst writers of all time. I admire people who do it, and I think it's a nice way to work, but I try to do the best I can and write what I like. I don't worry about it.

"Rednecks" always made me nervous to play, but I'm glad I wrote it and I continue to play it. It's just that the language is so rough.

In England, in France, in no other country would a black man have a chance to get elected. There's no two ways about it. Our country [USA] has been better about dealing with immigration and people who are different from each other than any other country in the world, that I know of.

If you have a kid and you try irony out on them, they don't get it at 7, 8 years old. You can't really hide the Internet from kids. It worries me some particularly because I've done Disney and Pixar stuff.

I like science - geography, meteorology, cosmology.