Whether it is successful or not is not the exercise for me. It is not up to me. It is out of my hands now. I am not going to in two years have hindsight and say I made a big mistake.

I am responsible for me. I can kind of take care of what I need to do and should do what I like to do.

I never aspired to be up front. When I was a kid, I didn't ever look in the mirror with a hairbrush going, "Hey, I'm Elvis!"

At the end of the day, all people want to do is hear a great singer sing a great song. They don't care about what vocal changes it went through. You can't screw up a great song and a great singer.

We all get caught up in the process, especially when you have a wave of success. But to me, being creative is not about rehashing everything you've done over and over. It's to continue to grow, continue to get better.

It is not that I don't like contemporary country music because I do. I love it. I have recorded a lot and have had great success recording records that have not been very traditional country records.

Everything I've done feels like I'm just as much a part of it as if I was the producer. It's still the same job: all of us together figuring out the common good for a song. That's the only thing that matters. It's not like, "I'm the boss, and I'm gonna tell you what to play."