When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.

When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.

I’ve always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks – you learn craft, you learn structure, all that – as you go.

Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I’ve written, are stories driven by characters.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming from inside. There’s no tricks. It’s honesty with big melodies.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

It’s insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it’s assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It’s that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he’s telling you something about his own life. It’s so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

I wrote a song with Ed Sheeran that was kind of spontaneous.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

It’s a pity that nobody has found an exploding black hole. If they had, I would have won a Nobel prize.

I really wish I knew what I was doing because I’d be writing hit songs every minute.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

I’m a serious aficionada of country music – Reba McEntire, Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry. I’ve even written some songs. They haven’t done anything of mine yet. But it’s only a matter of time.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

I write music every day.

The first four and a half years was me in the studio every day, writing songs for other people. I had jobs, too – eleven jobs. I worked at Kinko’s, Fatburger, Subway – I was a sandwich artist – and I was a claims processor at Allstate Insurance.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

I’m not afraid to write my feelings in songs.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

The people in my songs are all me.

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.

These are all personal crises, I’m sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It’s as simple as that.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

When you write a song like ‚Forrest Gump,‘ the subject can’t be androgynous. It requires an unnecessary amount of effort.

If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you’re sort of writing the same song over and over again.

I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.

What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don’t really think that hard.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would stop and say, ‚Oh, that’s the hook right there,‘ I’ll move that to the first four bars of the verse and do a new hook.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

One of my most popular songs, ‚Satellites,‘ I paid $300 for that beat on SoundClick.

I used to think information was destroyed in black hole. This was my biggest blunder, or at least my biggest blunder in science.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.