I'm really good at writing 'almost hits'.

But I really do have a soft spot for the solo shows. Any musician who writes and sings will tell you that's the center of it, that is it. It's almost like there's something church-like about it and you gotta go back there, if you're a songwriter that sings your material.

The music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn’t happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it.

It’s a tough thing to know that when you’re making your album, you’re going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.

Everyone, when you’re a teenager and you’re growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it’s not.

If the melody is telling me this is what the song is about, then I’m sort of forced into confession, autobiography or fantasy. If I don’t do that, I’ve hamstrung the melody.

I do have that mindset – that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.

I think people use temp music quite a bit, but the people who write the temp music don’t ever really learn that their music was inspiring a movie.

The way I see it, there’s only one melody for any song.

When someone really goes to tell you something about what they’re thinking, they’re going to wear that experience with them. That’s what you have to share.