“I am a true believer that a record should not be a bunch of songs that sound exactly the same.”

One of the cooler moments of my life was sitting front row at Helmut Lang!

I’m working all the time. When I’m home I try to split my time evenly between resting and preparing for another tour, and writing stuff.

I’d love to have a shoe line, or a sunglasses line, or a purse line. Who am I kidding, I’d like to have an everything line!

Making music can sometimes make me a bit restless, so it’s fun when I get to be expressive in another way.

Advice I would give to anyone trying to find their own personal style: don’t copy anybody, just be yourself, and make your own trends.

My favorite record of all time is Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. It’s made up of a bunch of songs that don’t really sound the same, but they all go really well together.

It’s scary when you get to a point where you write these songs that people like, and then you think, “Am I ever going to be able to write something better than that?”

I love clothes so much, I always have. It’s awesome to have designers invite me to their shows and openings and send me samples of their work.

As artists and creative people it’s such an important time to be expressive and be empowering and supportive of people. It is a time where I feel like everyone has to be together and say, “Hey, we’re all going to be okay. We just need to work together.”

I was never really that great at sewing, but I had a good idea of what I wanted things to look like.

I don’t really pay too much attention to designers, I know what I like and I just try to find it, and I always try to find a cheaper deal because I have a tendency to be a cheapskate sometimes.

I don’t think lyrics need to be deep – just write whatever comes out of you. You don’t need to find intense meaning in everything.

I buy most of my clothes online, I just sit around and look at websites and say ‘oh that looks cute’ – and then I just buy it and hopefully it fits because buying stuff online is always sort of risky.

I went to school for a short period of time to study fashion. I wanted to become a stylist or a designer. I made clothes when I was a teenager that I used to sell online. My label name was “Baby Jesus” – so incredibly stupid, but whatever, I was 17!

I like the 50s, party-movie aesthetic of the beach. I’m not really into modern-day beach.

I think what we do is really, at times, a complicated thing. But at the end of the day it’s so important that we make art for people that need to escape reality for a second. That’s what music has always been for me. It’s been a way to tap out of what’s going on in my personal life.

I don’t want to live on past records.

Why would I want to sound like Joni Mitchell? I’ve got Joni Mitchell records, and they’re great, and I couldn’t possibly be that good.

My band is the best band in the world, period. So, I insist on every song being better than it is on the record. So by the end of the tour, we have to be playing the song better than how it’s recorded.

We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn’t get arrested a year later.

I’m not going to do the Ben Harper house record or the Ben Harper drum ‘n’ bass record.

When I got involved with The Five Crowns who later became The Drifters, and we got this hit record, I still was looking at this as kind of a fun thing.

I love making records; I love making music; I love writing songs.

One other thing, if it’s possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers.