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I was neurotic and weird from an early age.

I was always told that I was too strange or that I was too cheesy by different groups of people, like the record companies said I was way too weird and the indie people wouldn't even let me in their band.

I have always felt extremely weird. But I am very happy with my weirdnesses, and I want other people to be very happy with theirs.

In high school, I was so painfully self-aware that how I thought of myself was probably very different from what other people thought of me. I thought of myself as just painfully awkward and dorky. I had a lot of hair and was kind of weird. I sang a lot in the hallways.

I fight these strange personalities by getting into music.

That weird dark energy - when I was a kid, I didn't know what it was. I just had to 'thrash it out,' as my mother called it. I became quite intolerable, creatively and artistically, with other people. I wanted nothing more than to be part of a group, and yet I couldn't help alienating people.

I was weirdly obsessed with music until I was 11, and then I turned into a nerd.

I always felt like I was a freak when I was growing up and that there was something wrong with me because I couldn't fit in anywhere.

I knew I wanted to do music at eight years of age. I listened to a lot of Motown growing up, and it got to the point where I started mimicking people - Michael Jackson or whoever. People started to notice I could hold a tone. The bug was always there.