Well, things hold up even if they sound dated. It can be very difficult to listen to 80s pop songs with really, really gigantic smashed drum sounds. You just want to turn that gated reverb down on the snare. It sounds wrong now. It sounds amateurish. And ugly. But at the time it sounded state-of-the-art. So yeah, I think it's important not to sound state-of-the-art in a way that anybody else is going to sound. Or you'll quickly sound like yesterday's state-of-the-art.

There are only so many instruments you can layer on top of each other that aren't perfectly electronically programmed. "Long Vermont Roads" just cannot be performed live, because it's just too cluttered if it's played by humans. Synthesizers stay out of each other's way in a way that hand-played instruments never can.

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?

Well, there are certainly original things to say. But I'm not sure that a pop song is the appropriate format to say them in.

When you're making a singular pop song, you don't really need any subject matter. You just sort of say, "Uh, I love you." And then you try to figure out some rhyme for that, and there never is one.

I'm not too sure if I have a very smart approach to revealing my life. Luckily, I doubt if many people really care about my life that much.

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