When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.

God knows why - no pun intended - but every time I write a song, I feel a need to touch on religion.

I don't think I ever worry too much about what our target audience is, what we should be releasing. I just write naturally and organically and try to write from the heart.

When I write love songs, people think they're really soppy - but I see love as a consolation for the boredom of life.

I don't write poems and put them to music. Just let things flow.

I didn't write songs for a very long time.

When you first sit down to write the first song, until you've maybe got three or four under your belt, it's always, to me, like a mountain to climb. You look at that one blank piece of paper and you think, `God, how many songs do I have to write here?' It always feels like pressure.

I don't know if it's cool to say this anymore, but I grew up listening to Gary Glitter. A majority of his songs were in that shuffle-blues beat, and I think that's probably why I tend to write like that.

Anything that I write comes from the soul.