Musician

The thing that I took away as an early fan from Bob Dylan was the storytelling aspects. He can tell some wicked stories.

The main thing that you have to remember on this journey is, just be nice to everyone and always smile.

I've always had really messy hair.

I was on some TV shows with Lady Gaga the other week, and you could see the difference in reaction between her fans and my fans outside. She comes out, and she looks like a star, and the reaction is just tears, crying, people going, 'Oh my God, Oh my God.' My fans are like: 'Alright, Ed.'

Some of my tattoos are a bit silly, but I know where and what time I got them.

I think the music I've created is quite odd, and people are going to start talking about that.

I think YouTube has destroyed the genre barrier. People can be into Justin Bieber and Eminem at the same time. It's a good thing.

I've never really been a confident person, except from a musical standpoint. I had to push myself early on, but it got easier with each gig.

The more you write tunes, the better they will become. The more you do gigs, the better you will become.

I think I need to accept the fact that I am where I am today because fans have shared my music illegally and legally, but I wouldn't be here today without the Internet, so I can't speak out against it.

I want to have a career that evolves as I go on.

I've had years of teasing about my red hair, but I definitely think it toughened me up. If you're ginger, you end up pretty quick-witted.

I met Bill Clinton; he's a very nice guy. Yeah, Bill Clinton's cool.

Everyone knows almost everything about me. I make it very clear that I'm cool with people knowing all my personal life through my songs.

Try to find someone with a sense of humor. That's an important thing to have because when you get into an argument, one of the best ways to diffuse it is to be funny. You don't want to hide away from a point, because some points are serious, but you'd rather have a discussion that was a discussion, rather than an argument.

Country music is some of the best-written music in the world, so yeah, one day, I would keep my mind open to doing a country record.

I think the moment you start trying to please a fan base is when you start going downhill. I'm going to always, always write about what I want, even if it doesn't necessarily cater to most of them.

Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

I think encouraging young people to twerk might be a bad thing. It's a stripper's move. If I had a daughter of nine, I wouldn't want her twerking.

I think I've been around for a while. But I still have to pay my dues.