During the 2012 Olympics, I decided to put on some cheesy pop because I knew Ellen White liked it. The first song was 'Reach for the Stars' by S Club 7, and before I knew it, everyone was singing it - suddenly it was our song.
I've always had an eclectic taste in music. But what I try to do is combine these things in ways that others would never think of, like putting Bun B on an Elton John song.
This never happens, but I was writing with my friend Ryan Hurd and Eric Arjes, and we wrote this song called 'Last Turn Home.' The next day, my publisher emailed it to Tim McGraw's label. He listened to it, and I think within the week, he went into the studio and recorded it. And that never happens.
'Mi Gente' is a song that embodies a special moment in music - a new sound of a Latino culture on the rise and being embraced globally.
I worked hard on making a body of work that takes people on a journey. It was never about making a certain type of song. It was simply about embracing real-life situations.
The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our most primitive times, the emergence of talented painters to make cave paintings without there having been, near at hand, equally creative people making song. It is, like speech, a dominant aspect of human biology.
Wherever and whenever God is moving in a new and fresh way, there emerges a new song!
'My Name Is' by Eminem was a song that changed my life.
Now, performing is second nature and I love every second of it. It is a very emotional thing when I can't play a song; maybe I'm hitting on something that I don't want to deal with. All of it is so personal. It is like therapy.
The song 'Innocent' is a song that I wrote about something that really, really emotionally impacted me.
I would have to say Kelly Clarkson's 'Because of You' would be the song I would associate with coming out. It's really emotive, and personally, it reminds me of my father.
In every song, there is a vocal element that doesn't have any words. I wanted to play around with how emotive and expressive my voice could be.
I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.
I try to just encompass the entire feeling and emotion behind the song the best way possible, and if that's 100,000 screaming guitars right in your face, then that's what's going down.
I always give the encore over to chaos, so people can yell out requests and I can hack my way through a song that I don't really know anymore.
When we first started out we only had five or six songs we could play live, so if we ever got an encore, we used to do our cover of City High's 'What Would You Do?' We'd be playing it and people's mouths would be moving singing all the words, but they'd be thinking, Where is this song from? It's such a brilliant pop song but the lyrics are so dark.
Since I met Starsmith, my producer, I really feel like I'm making music because we write it together and produce it together. I've got a proper involvement in the end product as opposed to just writing a song and finding someone else to produce it.
There are times pop music is the end result when I'm in the studio, but I don't really go in and say, 'Today I am going to make a pop song,' but it can happen.
I write songs very quickly, so the 20 minutes of joy I get out of writing a song doesn't compare to the two months of joy I get engaging with the people who like my music.
From the engineer to the producer, all of these roles are critical to creating a song.
