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.

With iPhones, nobody has an excuse for writer's block. If you're at Whole Foods getting your green tea extract and you have a melody, you just drop it into your voice memo and save it for later.

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.

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.

So for every day that you're on this earth, for every minute that you have, the whole idea is doing nothing less than exactly what you feel you're supposed to do and squeezing every last drop out of life every day, regardless of the difficulties or trials that you face.

Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music.

I live in Los Angeles, which is the second most polluted city in the world, and I wake up in the morning to dirt all over my window.