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.

I don't remember things initially when listening to music. Like, I don't remember where I first heard a song, I don't have nostalgic attachment to a song in that it reminds me of such and such a time or place. I think I probably did experience that somewhat when I was not a full-time, professional musician, but I don't think music works that way for people who are in it constantly.

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.

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.

I gave up music criticism because of the increasingly obvious conflict of interest. I couldn't say anything bad about the records when I might be meeting that person's manager backstage an hour later.

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."

Surf is that music which is entirely about evoking something. There's never any vocals, so it's not about the lyrics, it's about the reverb.