A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
I just did a dramatic love story. Whether it's a cultural phenomenon is not for me to say.
I always said I never wanted to write about love, but then I went and did that anyway.
Love Scars' blew up pretty fast.
What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.
When I write, I work off of a theme, an emotion, a narrative - thinking of it and then expounding on it.
'ABCD...' was a dance movie, but it had an emotional story, and now 'ABCD 2' is a very emotional film, too.
Typically, the theme of my albums, if there is a theme, is, 'How does it feel?' And that always leads to love songs. It just does.
Emotional life is - alongside work - one of the great challenges of existence and is a theme that I keep returning to.
The song 'Innocent' is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.
I don't sing about politics or anything like that. I sing about love. That's what I know about.
'Unbreakable Smile' was based off one of the songs I wrote for the album - it was actually the first song I wrote for the album without realizing it yet. I think I wanted to name the album that because it seemed like that was just the theme of that chapter in my life and just the theme of all the songs put together.
