It's a thanksgiving to God. It's something I have wanted to do for a long time, but the record company wasn't ready for it. So I did it myself.
I'm finding myself really angry over spending and the deficit. I'm finding myself really angry over what's happening in the Middle East, the decision to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. I'm angry about cap and trade. And I've been on record for a long time on the failed war on drugs.
In the process of making the record, I was just so bored all the time working whatever stupid job. I felt like a stagnant pond that has algae and mildew and weird animal cells, and I felt like if I sat around not doing anything long enough, that I'd probably end up going a little bit crazy.
I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I'm stable.
I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.
I had a good record company right from the beginning, and I'm still with them after all these years. I think I may be the only person in the world that's had a tenure this long with any record company.
I told the record company I didn't feel the need to be at red-carpet events. I wanted a career. But I wanted to keep myself intact as a person.
So I did that for a long time in my career, and I waited for parts to play myself just physically down a little bit. But I do feel like I'm at a place in my career now where I don't necessarily fret about that too much anymore.
You can picture pretty easily if there were a paying passenger aboard a rocket that failed, like Challenger failed. Certainly it would be a tragedy, and a tragedy for the company. They would have a hard time recovering from it.
I'd hit thirty, I'd sort of failed as a musician, I'd failed as an artist I felt at the time.
I felt a certain modicum of success because I had been paid well to be an actor for the first time in my life, but I felt like I had done adolescent work on the show, and stepping into the New York theater arena was the first time I felt like I'd come into my own. I felt like I was proving myself in a gladiatorial arena.
The record company felt wisely that we should get something out before I left 'Hamilton' or around awards time, and that deadline was not easy.
I failed at the biggest things there are in life. I failed in my health, I failed in my marriage, I failed in everything, and I've picked myself up and gone on.
For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival. I was convinced that the woods were calling me. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by myself by the time I'm 25, I have failed.
When I listen to and play the songs from 'Narrow Stairs' now, that record feels like a record where we had established a style that arguably was more our own than it was in the beginning. Going into that record, I felt a lot more confident in my songwriting. It was a fairly prolific time for me.
I don't think any of us felt like, "Oh, we need to put joke songs on the record." If we found something funny, we would record it, and if we wanted to, we'd put it on the record. It's not really something we spent too much time agonizing over.