Okay, a truly great song is a song that makes its own aesthetic intentions clear and then lives up to them and exceeds them in an interesting way. Alright?

I actually prefer to hear small groups of instruments. Orchestras seem to lack a texture for me, or variety of texture. There's only about ten things you can do with one note in a string section. But a lone violin is continuously changing textures.

I can imagine lyrics becoming better written by smart machines rather than stupid musicians. Songwriters generally have nothing to say. They may as well be replaced by machines.

I would say that the evocative qualities of music are usually put there in post-production in the reverb. It's really not much about the musicians as the engineering. It's post-production that's being done by the musician at the time.

My mother was into folk-rock when I was little, so I think of folk-rock as the norm from which everything else deviates. Of course, that's completely preposterous, but that's how I grew up. What is the norm by which to judge wordiness? I think I'm less wordy than Madonna.

Never try to do anything artistic when you're feeling something overwhelming. It's like driving a car: If you're experiencing road rage, pull over.

At first I was laboring under the impression that Chinese lyrics didn't rhyme. That turned out to be untrue - they don't rhyme in translation.