Honest always sells. Always has, always will.
I think often times if a guitar riff is centered around the chorus or if it follows the chorus, then it often times turns into the actual hook.
I grew up listening to English music.
I would rather put out two year-defining songs a year than flood the market with eight or nine songs.
I wish people would spend their money on hybrid cars.
I'm not interested in fad songs.
The cool thing about writing music, writing anything, is that once you publish it, it's there forever.
I live in Los Angeles, which is the second most polluted city in the world, and I wake up in the morning to dirt all over my window.
I think the best songs are being written by the very under-stated, under-appreciated indie artists. The thing that separates them from mainstream success is they either consciously or unknowingly refuse to deliver on a big chorus.
When I moved to L.A., I was penniless, absolutely beyond broke and in debt up to my eyeballs.
I'm actually introverted and shy.
I'm just a regular guy, but if you cross me it will get physical.
The Beatles are the most credible band in the history of music.
I am not opposed to doing a side project, like Death Cab for Cutie, where it's completely different from my own band.
Writing songs is about trying to connect with people on a deeper spiritual level - but I'm not a fan of contemporary Christian music.
When you're around enormously successful people you realise their success isn't an accident - it's about work.
With iPhones, nobody has an excuse for writer's block. If you're at Whole Foods getting your green tea extract and you have a melody, you just drop it into your voice memo and save it for later.
If you're talking to an architect, he can look at a blank piece of paper, and once the initial design is there, the formula kicks in. Each room should have something unique and different about it - much the same way that in a song, every eight bars or so, a new piece of information should be introduced.
I think the true test of a pop song, for me, and I've talked to a lot of other writers about this, is you take your demo, you pop it in your car and you drive down Sunset Blvd. to Santa Monica, and that's the Hollywood car test.
I'm terribly forgetful. I've lost laptops, cell-phones.
