Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.

I'm 18 in this album. I'm not losing fans and I'm not disrepecting women but you reach the maturity of taking it to the next level with a girl. It was only necessary for me to have at least one song like that.

I continue to believe contrary to the given wisdom that it's more interesting to have an album - or indeed an individual song - which has variety rather than homogeneity.

I have complete artistic control and I just do my best album every time and trust it to fate.

The success of Torn was a bit too much for me. I took a year off and was still scared to start the second album.

The Geezer album Black Science had a lot of keyboards and it did not work.

I like 'Bewitched' off the first album because it's one of the happiest songs I've ever written and as any writer will tell you happy songs are a million times more difficult to write than sad songs.

I try to make an album that reflects what I love about country music. It's not just all about happy parties all the time. There are some sad songs.

I've been looking forward to doing an album but it's really sad to see how many doors have been closed because of the gay thing. I thought it was about the music.

'The Taxi Ride ' from my second album is one people want to hear a lot. I'm consciously trying to walk on the sunny side of the street to really lift myself into a place of greater positivity and that's a sad song.