Playground magazine

Is your mother proud of the songs you’ve written about her?

Yes.

You are very honest in your song-writing. Is it hard not to write about some of your more profound secrets?

Yes.

I know you’ve been asked a lot about your upbringing in the Children of God cult. After all these years, have you been able to find any positive sides to that experience other than the fact of defining you as who you are right now?

Yes, a lot of that was positive for me, I miss a lot of things from my youth.

You released a limited-edition single titled “Lawrence”. What does Lawrence Hayward mean to you?

He is one of my favourite songwriters, one of my role models, someone who I want to be like, or, as good as, with my work.

You usually have good words for strictly pop icons such as Roxette or Selena Gomez. Do they inspire you? In what form?

Roxette was one of my first favourite bands and has inspired me for many, many years, I still love them. It's because they are good, their music is beautiful. They were a great band.

There are flowers in the cover art of your first two releases and you also place lots of roses on stage. What do you like most about them?

Only because they are romantic and beautiful, like we give them to our lover or someone who is sick, or to celebrate, or in a funeral. They are beautiful and make you feel like it's a special time... not just another band. We are a romantic band and flowers are very romantic because they are simple and natural and beautiful and will die, like us.

You are a quite active Twitter user. What are the advantages and disadvantages of social networks?

I don't like to talk about Twitter in interviews, I'm sorry. If people want Twitter they can go there, we don't need to talk about it here also.

According to your tweets, you seem to be a huge FC Barcelona fan. How do you follow soccer living in the States?

We have it on TV here also, and on the Internet, but I'm in Europe a lot, remember. And I grew up in Europe. I only moved to America when I was 16.