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I don't believe that recordings should sound radically better than the artist, I think that's dishonest. For example, I'm not a great singer but if I spent enough time tweaking my vocals, I could sound like one. But I don't, what you hear is pretty much what I sing.

I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing.

There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

It's not my style to be thinking about what a record is while I'm making it: I just write songs.

I don't think writing or co-writing my songs makes me a better singer, but I haven't really got an excuse not to do it as I've got too many opinions!

Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records.

So it's not so much that I set out to do something different, it's just that the songs themselves require their own individual voice and attention.

Really the only thing holding a lot of records together is the personality of the singer, and the will to write all of these different things.

When you write a song you have an idea of how it should be sung but it doesn't work out that way if someone else records it.

There's plenty of people who can sing OK that make terrific records, and I love them from afar. But when I make a record, I need great voices. That's always my mandate.