I eye 'Modern Love' warily between that second and third cup of coffee on Sunday mornings, calculating how much of a push I need to get through the day's unhurriedly earnest saga of heartbreak and recovery.
A song like 'Heartbreaker,' it's a song about learning - it's not necessarily a song about heartbreak. It's more than that. We write those songs to relive how we got over something.
My aim is for every song to have a purpose - for you to be able to say, 'This song is about this.' But love and heartbreak are some of the most abstract subjects.
I think everything in life comes in threes: heartbreak and all that. You've got to do the full round in order to learn.
One day I am at home, watching dramatic images of Iraqi Yazidis fleeing for their lives being aired nonstop on 24-hour news channels. Days later, I am there, staring at tens of thousands of displaced Iraqis and feeling a 35-millimeter frame cannot capture the scope of devastation and heartbreak before me.
I think the heartbreak of September 11 - America's grief not only over the loss of life but also the loss of our own innocence - has expanded us as people because it has tenderized our hearts. On a psychological level, the American people have matured as a result of that awful day.
My first heartbreak was extreme. I went to Australia for 10 months when I was at school and told the girl I was madly in love with not to come out to see me - and of course, when I came back, she met me at the airport to tell me she'd met someone else.
For the most part, that message hasn't changed a lot over the years - love is still love, and heartbreak is still heartbreak.
Sometimes a little heartbreak is a lesson, and the best thing to do is just learn the lesson.
