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Maybe it's good to be traumatized in your youth, to make you think differently and step outside the box. Anybody can be comfortable, but if you get your world rocked, shaken as it were, then maybe it causes you to really go to a whole other level in a different way.

My music has shaken hands with the world somehow - it's a beautiful disease, and I'm glad I got it.

I've always littered my songs with jokes. You might need to dig a little deeper to find the humor, but I would totally object to being some kind of distraught personality. I've never tried to attach myself to that.

If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or, perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.

I feel like I'm not on Earth just to shake it and shake it endlessly, you know?

I'm not proud of the lyrics to 'Shake It Up.'

I'm a pretty easygoing person, and it bleeds into the music. Even if I'm writing the most personal song, it's not going to come out totally serious; there's always a little tongue in the cheek.

I think it's part of the responsibility of an artist to shock, to upset, to make people think differently, and to surprise people. And that's where the good humor is, if there's a surprise and there's something unexpected. Something that's not normal, not in the realm of general living expectations.

So pretty much, to sum it up, if you can freak someone out and bring that kind of emotion out of somebody with a song, you're doing something right.

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.