If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced.

When I moved to L.A., I was penniless, absolutely beyond broke and in debt up to my eyeballs.

There is maybe a cynicism because of my past as a writer.

I'm in an odd position because I write across so many genres for so many people and they all influence me, and if I'm going to write as honest an album as possible, it's going to be layered.

The only thing contrived is the production - you can over-produce to the point you kill a good idea, you can under-produce so that the song's amazing but you'll have folks at a radio station saying they won't play it, so there's this balance, and it has to be true.

I can go write an absolutely saccharine pop record with a really catchy lyric for another artist that could become a hit without meaning anything to me, but that's more the science laboratory, that's the other thing.

Im not interested in fad songs.