Writing short, catchy pop songs was the hardest thing for me...

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.