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Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

You have the ability to write melodies and to put lyrics that mean something: to speak about life and what people are going through in their every day ups and downs, the good times and the bad times. Country music has always talked about life, I think; that's what I've always loved about it.

Lyrics can be important, but ultimately, what pulls people in on a song is melody and the tracks and the way music feels.

I do know that country music is driven by the songs. I think there's probably a core of what the material is about, which is family and love and the ups and downs of life, and I think that resonates with people.

My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.

Country is bringing in a little rock element... a little '80s element. Melody is king now. But its just in the music, its not so much in the songwriting, which is still very basic to the storytelling aspect of it.

I feel like fans who like old Southern rock and country, and more lyric-driven songs in general, have come to country radio. I think that's why you see country radio growing and albums selling: People are craving a little more of the singer-songwriter stuff going on in country.

My lyrics are more country - what I love is the storytelling and the structure, how tight the rhymes can be. But pop melodies have always been intrinsically linked to my writing style.

Within the songwriting community, there are these unwritten rules for the way that a song should be written in country music, and I think that those rules are constantly being broken over the years, and the molds change and the process is evolving.