It's a weird thing to be nineteen and be in the public eye. It was a crazy thing, it was a big deal to me, and it changed me in a lot of ways. And now that it's five, six years later, I wanted to look back at that, the start of it all, the excitement and the naïveté about it, and it just fascinated me to reflect on all that.

I tend to hear rhythm and melody, chord-progressions, long before I hear words.

I'm swept along by larger forces out of my control.

If every element of the song doesn't come within the first hour of writing, then you're never going to get it - if that makes sense. It's kind of like you need to be in a mental state where everything is so reactionary that you don't double-think anything, and so if it's not immediate then it's probably not going to happen at all, and you should probably toss the song.

I do feel like my music, in some weird way, is probably better suited for cinema than for anything else - I can't really explain, other than I think that music has been mostly inspired often by soundtracks.

I write one step at a time, always finishing off the part I'm working on before even thinking about the next part. I need to hear it all together before deciding what goes next. I even mix before moving on...in other words, I write by recording.

I put myself in the studio and I really made sure to say, 'Well, if I would normally reach for a trumpet, why don't I reach for the next nearest instrument instead?'