My dad and I had a real meeting of the minds. We loved to talk about music, politics, and art. He loved children. The thing I missed most about my dad when he died was that this person who really gets who I am at the core was gone.

The religion I have is music. Even the times I have headaches, when I'm singing, I can't feel them. My dad used to say that, too, especially near the end of his life. He would be in pain - a lot of pain - and he said the only time when he didn't feel pain was when he performed and sang.

And I don't think that success is going to destroy me at this point in my life, like I used to think.

Every person's every action has an effect.

As I started writing about loss and grief, I was taking what felt unmanageable and using my songwriting, my sense of poetry and discipline, to try and make it manageable.

The new record started out being about loss, but it's morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.

I was sensitive to music and poetry, and it was around me growing up.