So close to my heart and so emotional

But as far as it being the gloomiest record

I

Think I've written some pretty depressing records before this one

I think strange mercy might be take the cake on gloom

But um, but with this record, I really just wanted to write songs that spoke to the heart

you know spoke to my heart and

Made me feel something

Jack Antonoff was someone who was in my peripheral vision for a long time

And I always had this sense that he was like a really nice guy. He had a great, you know reputation

But I never really knew him until we sat down and

Had dinner and talked about this album and more than that. We just kind of talked about

Everything that was going wrong in each other's lives at that time. We just like

bonded in such a

heavy way very quickly and I just knew that he was the right person to work with because he was so

you know thoughtful and energetic and sympathetic and the

ultimate cheerleader, I think the great thing about music is that you

can put something out it can mean one specific thing to you and then other people hear it and

They look at it

With it in a totally different light and put all of their life experience and all of their emotional

states and you know baggage or all all the things and they put it on to the song if the song resonates with them and

so

The great thing about is a song is that it really ceases to be about the writer of the song

after it's in the world and

It's about every other person's experience with the music

so I write from a place of

I don't I don't think you can write things you don't

Know but they but it doesn't have to be literal

You can know something emotionally and a lot of times in songs

You find out what you think or how you feel about something just in the process of

Following this thread, you know

Over a number of months you you follow it and then you look back and go. Oh

That's how I feel. That's that's where I was. Wow, you know, I didn't realize it at the time exactly. I

Think for a long time because my primary instrument was guitar. It was the first it's my first love as a musician. I

Think that I was in some ways just trying to

Figure out. Okay. What's the lane that hasn't quite been

explored because I don't I don't want to do what would be

natural to me as

You know an early guitar player which was you know

as a guitar player you learn all these scales and kind of everybody can kind of play like a

half-bad blues, you know and I just didn't I

I was trying to find something that

Would excite me and and wouldn't make me feel like oh, I'm just doing something super cliche

And so the the genesis of kind of exploring was was a desire not to

Play bad blues, but the it just kind of bloomed into this other

lots of different kinds of sounds and now I I mean, I love the sound of a guitar like, you know,

It's just very different so

yeah, I

luckily because of technology and you know if you're techie or

Pedal nerd you know, you can make a guitar really sound like anything

my mom used to have a

Used to sing as a song those like we girls can do anything

and I think of us to the tune of Barbie the Barbie theme song it was his a

a

wonderful subversion, but

And you know I have just strong was surrounded by strong women and

Again it would

It was it was a funny. It was a funny kind of thing

you know being raised a certain way with a certain set of like obviously girls could do anything boys can do and

Then kind of going out into the world and then being that confronted with

how people think I don't think differently then that they're crazy cuz

We're gonna get some shit done, you know the fact that I had people in my life. Who were

Very close and who were doing the thing that I wanted to do just made it?

It made me go. Oh, this is possible. I didn't come from a family. That was that said like you want to be a musician

No way get back to accounting school

or or whatever

it was I I was lucky enough to to be supported in that because you know, my uncle's a genius guitar player and

he's made his whole life playing music and

so they they showed me what it was kind of really like on the road and

they

Really taught me how to work

and they taught me that I

need to be able to

In some ways do everything

Need to know the technical stuff. I need to know, you know be as excellent as possible the musical stuff

and I need to

Have this or they baked into me this sort of extreme

Reverence for music as like that. It's just this transformative and transcendent

Holy

Force my friend and I have a saying and just it's like

Creators create, you know, I was at a museum once in Lausanne Switzerland and and there was a

woman who had been sent to the insane asylum and her final her dream in life was that she wanted to get married and so

She created an entire wedding dress out of

Toilet paper and spit and it was the most beautiful thing you've ever seen so

Creators create if people have an irresistible urge to make something no matter where they are. They're gonna find a way

To build it, you know make it and and and that's really the thing that drives me

The most is a desire to just make things

just want to make things and

and and hopefully make great things and and

You know play shows that

people

May like or dislike, but they won't forget. I

Love Texas, I

love, Texas and I love Texans and

There was a period where you know

I kind of I felt like I needed to get out of here in my youth

you know when I was 18 I left and went to the East Coast and

and

it's sort of like I always think of the metaphor like, you know, when kids grow up and they're

So excited about Halloween and the next thing you know

They're like teenagers and they're like hallowee-- and that was so stupid and they were but they were just doing Halloween the year

you know a year ago and then they get a little bit older and they feel no longer threatened by the idea of

Who they were they're just like hey, it's Halloween

We're dressing up and having fun again that was sort of the trajectory of me in Texas. Like I left kind of go cool

I'm gonna do it

it's this and that it uh

and as I've gotten older and spent more time away from it and then

had texts and friends all over the world and

and

You know have a really strong relationship with my family. I'm just like I

Love this place. Well the essence of performance to me

Is that people are coming?

To see you play, right? They're not if they wanted to just listen to you

they would stay home with the record, but they're coming because they want to have an experience and

they want to

get taken to another place for an hour and a half and they want to

suspend their disbelief

That's what I want when I go see a show

And so I spend a lot of time. Just trying to make a

show that that does all those things that

is

okay, but everybody let's gather around this campfire and then just like

teleport into another dimension

for as long as we have together and then you know

Come back to Earth in a different state than we left it