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Melodies are just honest. They can only be what they are. Words have the capacity for deception. They're all full of subtext, and some of them are cliche and overused and vernacular. They're tricky. All I can say is, words are tricky.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

Whatever is original in my writing comes from my musical apprenticeship. I look for rhythm in words. I imagine words as if they were musical chords. Often I'll write something, read it, and find it musically unsatisfactory. There is a musical imperative in my choice of words.

I just wanted to make melodies. I started trying to do my own thing and let the melodies make the genre themselves.

I really like melodies.

Somewhere along the line the rhythms and tonalities of music elided in my brain with the sounds that words make and the rhythm that sentences have.

Music is about textures as well as melody.

Jazz and poetry both involve a structure that may be familiar and to some extent predictable. And then, you try to create as much surprise and spontaneity and feeling and variation while respecting that structure.

I've always had an ear for melodies, and they veer pop. My lyrics are more country - what I love is the storytelling and the structure, how tight the rhymes can be. But pop melodies have always been intrinsically linked to my writing style.