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When you're recording classic songs, you've got to kind of make them your own, and you can't always worry about what people are going to think.

Writing music on your own makes you think a lot about your life. Who are you? Would you change anything about yourself? This is where it comes from.

When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.

There's certain songs that you're gonna record that you hope to touch people and change lives, and there's certain songs that you know that are not going to be that serious.

There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

People come up to me and say, 'You changed my life.' I don't think I changed anyone's life. I think their life changed while they were listening to the music.

When I record somebody else's song, I have to make it my own or it doesn't feel right. I'll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn't know it!

I think one of the pitfalls of doing your own music is that sometimes you can never be satisfied with it: you're afraid to say that it's done, and you keep reworking it or re-recording it or re-writing it.

As I've gotten older, I've found that I'm not afraid anymore to throw my influences into making a record.

I'm sure that the meaning of the songs that I've written will change for me over the years, the same way that I can't even say what inspired some of the songs that I've been singing for a long time anymore.