I've probably been writing songs in Nashville longer than anybody. My first co-writer was Andrew Jackson,

Sometimes the best songs almost write themselves

Writing short, catchy pop songs was the hardest thing for me to do. The reason boils down to how things are perceived. The most mystifying thing is why a certain combination of words and melody will blow people's minds, while others - which is 99.9 percent of all songs - fall flat. That for me was the search: to discover how to create songs that had that quality.

Sometimes we disagree when writing songs. We'll get mad at each, but eventually we'll put everything together and it all comes out fine. We won't stay mad at each other for long.

Writing songs is super intimate. It's a bit like getting naked.

I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was.