I think when I work with artists, I'm at their service, and I'm at the service of either their vision or a vision that we find together and we share.

I think that all music is inherently political, and, at the same time, I'm interested in the politics of inclusion not exclusion. So I think that my goal is to make music that anybody can hear and feel moved by.

The original 'Don't Let It Get to You' started with a beat. The drums came first. All the musical and lyrical elements were written over those drums.

I've had experiences where my life will try to tell me something in a dream and sometimes it's something I'm not ready to hear.

In the West we are constantly hit with music of Middle Eastern descent signifying terror, intrigue or sorrow.

Shangri-La is one of the few studios in which you can sit in the control room and open a window behind you. You can feel the light and the air coming off the ocean. You can have a musical world in front of you and the natural world behind you.

I feel like when I was in college I was listening to the Walkmen a lot and I actually have a memory of having a dream and in the dream I saw the Walkmen perform with saxes.

Yeah, I'd always wanted to do a song with finger-picked, nylon-string guitar.

I'm very aware of what, say, electric guitar recordings in the '60s sounded like.

I tend to use different microphones, different mic techniques, and different recording mediums - like analogue tape - that evoke multiple eras of recorded music at the same time.

I don't have to just have one kind of life. I can have several different creative lives.

Whenever I work on a project I put all of myself into it.

The first Vampire Weekend record was the first full-length album that I produced.

What's interesting about Vampire Weekend, everyone in the band, except for me, had a band in high school in which they were the lead singers. And I'm the one who never had that experience.

I started playing guitar when I was 14.

I guess my first instrument was the recorder when I was about five or six.

I had spent so long trying to be the perfect husband.

I do not regret the end of my first marriage.

I have done a lot of interviews over the years, so you think I would know how to handle difficult questions, etc. But the truth is, I don't.

The beauty of being in Boyzone - and maybe other bands are the same - is that as soon as you're back together again, it doesn't matter how long you've been apart. It feels like nothing's changed.

It was amazing to be on the map, to be recognised by other artists, and to be so successful.

Not a lot of bands get to go out on their own terms.

Twenty-five years has been a good run. Boy bands like Boyzone don't get to last this long, usually.

The most influential person in my life had been George Michael. He was very important to me and was one of my musical heroes growing up. Then he became a friend and mentor and someone I'd lean on.