When you're like, 'Yo, we gotta write a hit song, we need a hit song right now,' that never works. Every time that happens, I never write a hit song.

Sometimes you're gonna write a song and it's not gonna be right from the beginning. And you're just gonna have to work through that wall. But if you know something is there, you've gotta just keep doing it until you get it right. So, I'll work on a song for three months if I have to, to get it right.

Most of the time when people work with an artist, they don't give them what they need for the future, they give them what their last album sounded like. So it's like, 'Oh, One Republic needs a song, why don't we send them 10 that sound like 'Apologize?'

I can be at my house sitting there making music alone, and every single time I've ever done that the first thing I do when I'm done, no matter if it's 4 in the morning... I literally just pick up my phone and I call someone.

I let the song come to me. Then that thing comes to you, and you just know what that thing is. Music isn't like a 9-to-5 job. You never know. It's just the most unpredictable thing.

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.