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Early in my career, people wanted to hear music about protest, about trying to change things.

I mean, there's a hell of a lot of grounds for protest, but you don't do it through music.

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.

You can't just sit around and make protest albums all your life; eventually it comes to the point where you have to do something.

Protest is patriotic. Since the beginning of musical time, American singers and songwriters have used their talent and bully pulpits to show us America's strengths and shortcomings.

The nice thing about a protest song is that it takes the complaint, the fussing, the finger-pointing, and gives it an added component of sociable harmony.

Other than Green Day, we haven't had a lot of protest music over the past few decades.

I don't set out to write a political song. I am not one of those that feels compelled to write about what's going on.

I really didn't think about song writing.

Writing songs for other people was never the goal for me.