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" My goal is to try to avoid a genre. "

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" I was an English major, and I always wrote poems. "

" You write these songs which are really dear to you about your family or friends, loved ones, and then you get this call, and they say, 'It's perfect for two vampires making out in the back of a car.' It's some random TV show, and so I say, 'Oh, yeah, perfect - that's what I meant it for.' "

" With 'City of Black & White,' I wanted a record that would make you feel good, that would sort of take you up in its hand and sweep you along. "

" All of my acoustic playing came from my songwriting. All of the chords I've learned and all of the voicings I play them in are a direct result of composing. "

" Hopefully, reading and being around great literature inspires me to write songs, but I'm not sure about that. "

" There's this song called 'Brad Chester,' which is like the depths of my family. It comes from a very personal place. "

" As an artist, you tend to gravitate to the opposite. I know, when I finish a song or an album, I'm interested in doing something completely new. It doesn't always happen, but that's the idea. My poor fans - I don't know if they love that or hate that. "

" I think I have always made really beat-driven pop-rock records. "

" I've always been a writer. I've always done writing or spoken-word, hip-hop stuff with my friends. "

" I love Michigan. "

" Generally, the songs that are the scariest ones are the ones that people connect to. "

" When my first record came out, it was in the middle of the real Muse, Keane, British thing, and that beat-driven thing wasn't really that cool at the moment. "

" For my father, he didn't know what 'Grey's Anatomy' was. He didn't know who John Mayer was. But when I showed up on the 'Law & Order' TNT promo spot, he thought, 'Wow, my son has made it.' "

" I grew up in Oregon, so there was always a lot of that folksy, Bob Marley stuff. There was a mural of Bob Marley on a wall at my high school. "

" I think, in a lot of ways, hip-hop is interesting to me because it's like the modern-day folk music. "

" I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it. "

" Owl City is exactly as you'd imagine him. It's hard to have much on him. He's like a frightened bunny. I feel like if you yelled at him, he'd just dart to a corner of the room. "

" The first record blew up and sold really well. 'City of Black & White' didn't sell as well, and that's when you wonder, 'Did I peak already?' "

" Growing up in Eugene, Oregon, there was everything from The Notorious B.I.G. to Weezer playing in my car. "

" When I started forming my own taste, there was a period in high school when I listened to only rap and hip-hop, like A Tribe Called Quest. "

" I enjoy changing; I think it's more fun to try something different than to just do what you did last time. As an artist, you just want to keep creating, keep finding a place that really inspires you that feels fresh and new, and keep it exciting. "

" More than any other instrument, the relationship between an acoustic guitar and a microphone is super-important. The kind of mics that you use and your placement of the mics to the guitar can radically alter your sound. "

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" There are a lot of great recording artists, like Jack White and Jack Johnson, who stay confined inside a very small box, but I'm more like Bon Iver, who recorded an album with programmed drums, and the next record was totally organic. I get that. "

" I don't know how much I'm connected to the hip-hop scene, but I definitely lend from that urgency. "

" I was always into poetry and writing. So the urgency of spoken word is something that really has always appealed to me. "

" 'City Of Black And White' was me trying to do something more mature, more adult contemporary. "

Black And White

" There are people I love in Nashville and would not want to go a day without talking to, but I want to see the world. "