I'm kind of a little allergic to that whole, 'Let's go to L.A. and write a bunch of hits.'
You can hear 'Human Nature' all over our song 'Elevate.' It's an amazing song. That hooky arpeggio in the beginning is great. Unlike most Michael Jackson ballads, even though I'm a huge Michael Jackson fan, this song is kind of restrained. It's not a huge, crazy song you can dance to - it's just this beautiful piece of music.
The music I used to make was a lot more rock, so I come from this background of head banging a lot, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it in the context of our music.
I love so many songs from the '80s, but I'm obliged to the big ones.
The '80s definitely influence my music in a big way.
I was always into things like Boyz II Men and boy bands, and then I got into Radiohead and alt-rock.
I find that when I'm under pressure, I work really well, but then you have those days where you sleep for four hours because you drive to a venue overnight and arrive there the next day, and you're cranky and not dealing with it very well.
I like to make bombueti, which is basically the South African national dish. It's basically a South African curry shepherd's pie kind of thing.
The first city I ever came to in the states was Des Moines. I was 12 and was in a boys' choir.
The upside to doing commercials is you have to work in a lot of different genres and make stuff that you never thought you'd be making.
I think the job of the first single is kind of like being a diplomat for a country.
Everyone knows Earth, Wind & Fire. We know 'September,' all the big sort of hits from going out and dancing and stuff. When I was developing St. Lucia, I really started listening a little bit deeper, listening back to their stuff from the '70s and '80s, and really dug into it.
I feel like when you're in your late teens and early 20s, you just don't think about certain things in your life, and as you get older, you think about your parents getting older.
A short story can be really interesting and enriching and powerful, but a novel just contains so much more information and richness and depth. That's what I strive for in my music. I want to create something that's like a longform statement.
The music has a very strong escapist quality to it. In the moment where you feel like you need to escape, or when you are escaping, that's a good time to listen to 'When the Night.'
My lyrics are quite train of thought, and they are all over the place, but they evoke something.
I feel like people associate us with the tropical Hawaiian print because, for a long time, we were wearing a lot of bright colors to exert our personality.
St. Lucia represents, for me, where I found myself musically once I stopped trying to be cool, in some way, and stopped stopping these guilty pleasure influences I had from coming through.
At a festival, some people are just there because they're waiting for, like, Calvin Harris to come on later.
I feel like Hawaiian shirts have definitely made a comeback.
