I think there is such a valid concept as "serious music," meaning that if you don't take it seriously, you don't get it all.

There's already a great deal to do writing the songs. And if I were completely in control of it, nobody would be able to say "this song doesn't work."

Serious music isn't listened to in a casual setting. You don't want to listen to that in headphones on the subway.

I think there is such a valid concept as "serious music," meaning that if you don't take it seriously, you don't get it all.

If the songs were in lumps, then you would expect to understand what was going on in the plot. Which is not a realistic goal. And also the instrumentation is different for every show, so it's more varied sonically. And people are free to make up their own plots, of course. There are pretty dense and complicated plots, and they're simple songs.

If you want to write a love song, you need to not try to write it for a particular person in a particular situation. It needs to be vague, otherwise you're going to fall into trap after trap of trying to rhyme with somebody's name. Keep it vague.

There's a whole kind of melancholy that you can only attain with reverb. That's an example of a technology introducing a whole new meaning.