'Unbreakable Smile' was based off one of the songs I wrote for the album - it was actually the first song I wrote for the album without realizing it yet. I think I wanted to name the album that because it seemed like that was just the theme of that chapter in my life and just the theme of all the songs put together.
Before we started writing we did feel pressure because of the success of the first record. One of the first songs that we wrote was "Out Of My Heart" which is the first single. As soon as we wrote that, we knew we just set the standard and every other song had to be as good if not better.
I took a lot time to do the first album, and I was really happy about that album. I co-wrote the songs and it was a learning process. When I was working on that album I realized, for the first time, that I could write my own songs.
I wrote my first song when I was six or seven, a silly little song. But I used to write poems in high school - not songs.
When I wrote for myself before as an artist, I probably wrote about 15, 20 songs a year. I thought that was a lot. Then, when I first started writing for the people, I wrote, like, 65 songs in a year for two years in a row.
With songs, it doesn't matter what song it is; every time I go out and perform it, it's like the first time I'm performing it, the first time I wrote it. If it's not, then I'm not going to do it that night.
The first time I wrote a song, I couldn't really believe - 'Can you just do that? You're just allowed?' I never thought about songs on the radio and who wrote them.
The first two songs that I wrote, produced and demoed with my voice on it was that song and then Akon's "Sorry, Blame It On Me." The first two demos I ever wrote and demoed, the two biggest artists at the time took them.
A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.
I listen to old songs and remember exactly where I was living and where I recorded it and how I wrote it, the girl I was dating at the time or whatever.
Every song that we wrote for the first album made it. We didn't think about writing a bunch of songs and picking the best ones. We had to just make the best songs we ever wrote.
It's so funny because I listen to songs that I recorded that I didn't really know anything about at the time. Later on I'm starting to feel the songs. Sing them first, feel them later.
When I wrote those first songs for the Truckers, songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day,' those were strong songs, very strong songs. But had I been in the position of writing an entire album at that point in time, I don't think the whole album would have been of that kind of quality.
That's very hard because there's three of them that mean a LOT to me equally. 'Lissie's Heart Murmur' was one of the first songs that we ever wrote - it was one of the first songs, at the very very very beginning of our band and I've always wanted to see and hear that song recorded and turned into something and it finally was and is!
Everybody likes to listen to a song because it's fun, and nobody wants to sit around and listen to 'I-really-have-to-analyze-these-lyrics' songs all the time.
The first songs I ever wrote - my first, like, serious offerings - were all written on ukulele. It's always been a part of the way I write for a really long time.