Musician

If you're walking through the Union Square subway station - New Yorkers know it's obnoxious and crowded, and in the summer it's too hot - there are always amazing musicians playing, and sometimes there are multiple, different musicians set up in there.

I've definitely been in that situation many times - staying in a relationship longer than I should. I think there's so much of your identity that comes from a relationship.

Before I play a show, I put on lavender oil - it's sort of a ritual.

I was born in New York, but I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut - that's where I went to school. I remember begging my way into choir in the 3rd grade, because you're not supposed to get in until 4th grade.

'Ashes Of Love' has much more hot-blooded vocal than what PC Music is known for, and a much harder production than what I usually do, so I was fully prepared for people to hate it.

Yes, when I come up with ideas on my own, it's almost always a melody, just as often an instrument or bassline as it is a vocal. But it is a single, linear, monophonic thing. Something you could hum or whistle.

We are always in a state of flux, and taking risks is important.

Everything I've done that I'm proud of is everything I've been the most hands-on with, so I'm just following that, really.

I think as I get older, I'm just going to start making smooth, new age music - no joke.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

I would enjoy seeing anyone else sing 'Caroline Shut Up.' That would be interesting. I would give that one away, actually, which is funny, even though it's very personal.

In New York, if you spend a few hours doing nothing, you feel like the whole world passed you by.

One of the goals we had when making 'Moth' was to have the vocals sound less treated and less processed than we'd ever had before, to just let them be exposed and very audible.

I think women are taught in the music industry that once you're 35, you've expired, and I'm here to prove that factually incorrect.

Being a musician, there aren't that many ways for me to consciously use a more strategy, math-based part of my brain.

My first concert was Third Eye Blind.

I kind of think that's the best way to operate; even when I'm in sessions writing with other artists, I'm always pulling from the kind of emotions that are the most raw in my own life and offering them up in the studio.

So, anyway, I think the format of love songs for me stopped becoming about people and started becoming about life.

Panging is the kind of sharp pain you feel inside when you're reminded of some kind of unattended need or something that you've neglected.

I remember thinking that writing love songs was stupid and cliche, and that my job was to not write love songs, because there are enough of them.