For me, there's a fine line between telling a story that's fictional with lots of details and then removing yourself too much from it, so it's bloodless, a little too fictional.
It's funny, because my last record was a lot about isolation and people living in separate worlds that other people can't even understand, which drug addiction is the perfect negative example of.
But I can't confront the doubts I have. I can't admit that maybe the past was bad, and so, for the sake of momentum I'm condemning the future to death so it can match the past.
I have a 6-year-old, and his thing is to turn on Radio Disney in the car, and I get such an allergic reaction to listening to that music and the context into which it falls. I'm really working on him about that.
Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.