There are still civil rights issues. There are still people who can’t be visited by their spouse in the hospital because they’re gay. These are humanitarian issues. At the end of the day, all you want is for people to be happy in the pursuit of life, love and liberty.
I tend to feel really protective of songs, and if they aren’t sitting well in a record, I’ll pull them tight to my chest until I feel it’s a better time.
In life, I’m most inspired by entertaining people and driven by the desire to do it by such a powerful force that I think it influences everything I do.
I feel like a lot of the singer-songwriters in my genre and in my generation have gotten more and more snooty about covering other people’s songs. They believe that creativity is the intersect of expression.
I’m not so arrogant to consider mine the only legitimate art form. I can’t in one breath make a fuss about someone compartmentalizing music into genre and then in the next accuse advertising and short film of not being art.
Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes. But the less vulnerable we are because of privilege, the country we’re born in, or the security we enjoy, the more vulnerable our souls are to apathy.
There’s a lot of really inspiring music coming around the bend – we tend to believe that to sound classic or timeless is to sound vintage or retro. It’s a little bit dangerous, because you’ll really miss a chance to make your mark as a generation.
I tend to support and get behind issues instead of candidates, because of the whole ‘Super Bowl’ generalization of our world – You’re on this side, I’m on that side; you’re a Republican, I’m a Democrat; you’re country music, I’m rock music.
It’s impossible to just come up with one thing that I could say to the world. That’s why I’ve spent my life in the pursuit of the opportunity to sing to it. Summing it up goes against what fuels me.
