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I believe that music is another form of news. Music is another form of journalism to me so I have to cover all the areas with my album.

Music is a lens through which to see who we are. Every phrase of every piece of music is trying to tell a story.

I'm always very careful to make the distinction between music criticism and music journalism. A lot of people don't. But criticism doesn't require reporting. You can write criticism at home in your underwear. On the other hand, journalism takes legwork - you have to get out there and see things and talk to people.

Naturally, no one knows more about music than musicians. They talk about their own work all the time, but they rarely get to talk about other people's music.

Sometimes people talk about music, whether blogs or magazines, in a strange way where it doesn't seem like they're actually listening to it.

The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers.

The tricky thing is music is supposed to be very mysterious; the way it's made is mysterious. Then people like to get upset with the music business.

You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.

The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer's main motivation is to become friends with the band. They're not really journalists; they're people who want to be involved in rock and roll.

When you make music, you're in really direct contact with your fans out there, so you hear all kinds of stories.