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Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things.

Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing.

There are a lot of producers who basically have their sound, and if the artist works with them, you almost know what the record's going to sound like before it comes out.

I think that it can be said of a lot of artists, and myself included, that we made the same record over and over from the beginning.

All the signs were right. And when I mean all the sings were right, the only signs that we care about when we start a project of making a record is, do we have the songs - it's that simple.

At the end of the day, you sign a record deal and you understand where it could go if you had the right song.

I generally prefer to come in to the studio with a fully written song and then work on the arrangement with the band. Sometimes even the arrangements are pretty much already worked out in my head, but other times we experiment.

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying.