My family was entirely political, all the time, on the left. The opposite of that is not to be political on the right. It's trying not to be - politics is not everything. There's life other than politics. Politics intrudes.
There is no such thing as being non-political. Just by making a decision to stay out of politics you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.
I'd like to think that what I've written over the years and what I'm doing now means something to people. People in the street all the time are saying "love the new record" or "I love that record," this tune or that tune. It means an awful lot, or it's been a big part of their lives. As a songwriter, what else would you really want? You're trying to connect with people, people's emotions, and maybe say something about their lives or feelings. That's probably a good enough compliment to receive, really.
You have a political and media elite who have an idiom by which they describe politics. It's highly, highly polarised. It's right, left, red, blue, up, down, victorious, crushed.
I think I've been incredibly raw my whole career. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to look cool and spend time being guarded and putting up walls. I just never had the time. It seems more honest to say, 'Hey, this is who I am.'
I suspect that a lot of the frustration people feel about government would feel a lot better if we had corporate influence out of our politics and were running a democracy like the founding fathers intended.
I spend an awful lot of time by myself and enjoy that.
I am so offended by Trump. I spend an awful lot of time helping to educate people about who I think he is and the danger that I think he is to this country. I will be working on those issues and trying to expose this president. I think that's important work.
I spend a lot of time hanging out with kids in their early twenties who feel like they've messed up and have really screwed up in a lot of ways. We spend a lot of time talking to them and saying, 'You can change that.'
For me, what is political is very personal. Politics are not this abstract idea. Laws are the rules that dictate how we live our lives. What we eat is political. How we dress is political. Where we live is political. All of these things are influenced by political decision-making, and it's important to be part of the process.
I live in London, and I spend a lot of time in England and have a lot of British friends.
Our training is world-class across all the services. We spend an awful lot on every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman that comes in, and we ask them to do an awful lot, sometimes more than we expect of ourselves, and they do that.
Don’t spend most of your time on the voices that don’t count. Tune out the shallow voices so that you will have more time to tune in the valuable ones.
I've had to spend an awful lot of my life trying to pretend I'm not posh. Although once I open my mouth, I rather let things out the bag.
I spent a lot of time, a lot of energy trying to be a better artist and I still [do]. I spend a lot of time focusing on my craft. If you're going to take your passion into something beyond just something for fun on the side, you got to spend a lot of time on it to be great, and then you've got to make smart decisions about who you collaborate with [and] where you live [to] put yourself in the right situations to meet the right people to catch those breaks.
Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it, if you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.