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When you research prolific songwriters, it is usually later in their career they write songs that they distance themselves from, or it's about other people.

I see what other people do and what songwriters don't. They don't get out and take care of themselves. Producers turn themselves into a massive brand. Songwriters tend to be under someone else's umbrella. If you're building your own legacy, it can't be under an umbrella.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

I'm a professional songwriter - personal attitudes have nothing to do with writing a song.

Sometimes when you're a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don't care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It's a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

The key to songwriting is just to be able to observe, and put yourself in situations to be around people, and let those ideas come to you.

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.

Traditionally, songwriters can't sing. And that holds true in my case, also.