The songs are definitely all about me. I am my favourite subject.

I'm never worried about being upstaged. I love to have the best, most individual people come in and see if we hit on something.

I don't try to stop myself from becoming too personal. I just put it all out there. If anything, I try to remind myself to be as honest as possible all the time. Why hold back?

I love the sad songs with their maudlin, self-deprecating, almost funny lyrics. As an Englishman, they make a lot of sense.

I'm a hybrid-genre person, which a lot of people find confusing. I grew up listening to American country music and rock n' roll made between 1955 and 1959. The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry were my first musical loves and are still what I am most moved by. Roy Orbison came a little bit later.

Internet radio stations like KCRW do take you everywhere, yet thats just one of a hundred small things you have to do to succeed. It used to be, if you just got on the cover of Rolling Stone and a spotlight on The Tonight Show, that was enough.

I went to a boarding school when I was 13, and it was a very arty school, so there was an opportunity for a lot more. I joined a band and so on. We would do concerts at school, and I would play cover tunes and thought, 'This is really great.'