I remember when I was growing up, I always wore glasses and so if I was on-stage or just being able to move around playing sports, I was never really able to because I had glasses holding me back. Wearing contacts has just been very helpful.

I think people have been really receptive to understanding that I've grown up and the music's going to sound a little different.

I feel like every artist has an opportunity to create something new and to challenge themselves to reach out to a new crowd.

I have definitely written a happy song about someone and then we ended up splitting up, but you have to put those kind of things to the back of your mind and tell yourself that it's a good song and it works on the album.

There's good art and there's bad art. A lot of action films are bad art, but Paul Greengrass showed us with the Bourne films that it's possible to make an action film with a political, social conscience.

There was once a time when art history and film were basically the same medium, but art history is frozen in late-19th-century technology that has survived into the early 21st century.

I got my own sound in Atlanta because I don't listen to anybody's music. When you listen to people's music, you start to say stuff they say as an artist because that's what you've been listening to. Me, I don't listen to anybody. I support, but I don't listen, because I don't want to run with someone style. I do my own thing.

I was in art school, and we had all these random classes. We'd listen to a lot of Bollywood. I'd listen to Spanish music - and I don't even speak Spanish, but Hector Lavoe is amazing - we listened to French music like Edith Piaf. She's tight. I like cool vocal inflections; I like cool sounds. I pretty much listen to anything I think is good.