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When people listen to artists, and you turn on the radio, it's a lot of gimmicks. And that's real. So I take it like there's nobody keeping it honest and truthful no more, especially as far as young teenagers and females.

If everyone in the music business were brutally honest about what their intentions were then you could sort things out, but it's all smoke and mirrors.

The music industry is a world of smoke and mirrors: they tell you exactly what they think you want to hear. And they are bare-faced lying. I tend to stay away from that.

Oh, I will always be honest with my music. The records are black boxes for me. Like if you want to know who I am, my views, my perspective, things I love, things I hate, my convictions, my anthems. I've never let people's opinions affect the way I write.

I'd be saying, 'No, I'm so not a DJ, I'm a producer.' But no matter how much faith you may have in yourself, until you have a hit you can't really run around telling everyone you're a producer.

The tricky thing about songwriting is that, more often than not, what you consider to be your best work generates a collective shrug, and something you've simply tossed off bowls people over.

If you're somebody who writes songs or writes fiction, a writer that people pay for your opinion in any way, you shouldn't be the least bit uncomfortable giving it to them. People want songwriters to tell them how they think and how they feel. That's what a song is. That's what I want to hear in a song.

I think in a weird way that the entertainment industry is strangely more brutally honest than any other.

The rule of songwriting: say what you want to say, say it again, say it a different way, then say it again.

People expect not just songwriters but all personalities to pontificate about their egos - they just wanna see someone talking about themselves constantly. I'm not interested in that.