I listened to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Motown records.
I'm in L.A., I'm in my early 20s, and I'm like, 'There are so many pretty girls here! Let's Marvin Gaye and get it on!'
I was carrying my friend in his casket to put him in the hearse, and I was thinking, 'I need to write a song for this guy, because he always told me I would have a No. 1 song.'
I'm down to act a little bit - go on a couple auditions or make one of those three-second cameos with one line.
Taylor was named after James Taylor and claims that she knows all the James Taylor songs, and I'm a huge fan of James Taylor and know all his songs, too. My dad told me that if I ever met Taylor Swift, I had to tell her that I know every James Taylor song. We started naming albums, and we were both shouting them out.
Shy Carter helped me write 'One Call Away.' He is a brand new artist. I really want to help jumpstart his career because I think he's super-talented.
If a girl sings a sexy song, I actually become even more attracted to them.
He's the reason why I write music. If he's reading this - James Taylor, I'd love to work with you! My mom would put headphones on her belly before I was born, so I've been listening to him literally all of my life. When my dad played me 'Walking Man,' I heard those chord changes and that melody, it completely blew me away.
I started piano when I was four. My mom taught me. And then I went to Manhattan School of Music during high school, like every Saturday. And then I went to Berklee for college, in Boston.
One of my goals is to find an unsigned YouTube artist and feature them on my album. That's what I wished someone would've done for me.
I came out to L.A. to be a songwriter and not an artist, and I'm so excited because I always secretly wanted to be an artist.
I didn't start singing until I was 16. I was afraid to sing in front of people.
I would be a giraffe because I just want to experience what a sore throat and being a giraffe feels like. It would be really uncomfortable walking around in the Sahara and being like, 'I really need, like, 15 lozenges for my giraffe body.'
A lot of people don't know, but New Jersey has, like, 700,000 acres of farmland.
I downloaded ProTools - legally, of course... and I wanted to impress girls by making remixes of songs.
I actually get a lot of messages with people saying, 'What's a Marvin Gaye?' and, I mean... Oh, wow. I must be getting old, because someone who was born in 2004 just asked me what a Marvin Gaye was.
I've always made weird sounds with my mouth. I've always been fascinated by the sound design, what you can do with your mouth. I was the kid dancing around in third grade on the basketball court. While everyone would be playing sports, I would be jumping around.
I didn't grow up wealthy. We couldn't even afford spaghetti sauce when I was first born, but my mom and dad worked really hard and came from the bottom up.
I'm always inspired by people who have really cool Twitter profiles.
'Marvin Gaye' came about my first day in L.A. It was kind of crazy that that's my first song that I wrote and it blew up that much. What's crazy is the next day I wrote 'See You Again,' so that's pretty interesting. I was trying to prove myself as a songwriter.
