In the past, Koreans have mostly copied other countries' engines, and so there's been kind of a problem with quality and a real limit on what they could do with that.

I prefer artists who are creative more than artists who are technical, I think everybody would agree with that.

About Jimi Hendrix - although his playing is at an uber-level, his voice is quite lo-fi and normal, like a regular person singing in the shower, and this makes his music much better than if he was just a technical player and singer.

Unfortunately most easily-digested entertainment has as much actual content as a Spongebob Squarepants episode, so the trick is to try to fit actual nourishing content into enjoyable entertainment.

To be entertaining and educational and enlightening, all at once, this is a good goal to have.

Everybody has a direct view of the person behind the art, so there is going to be a certain amount of awareness of who is making songs. But I like paintings where you can see the brush-strokes.

I don't think talking about myself making songs is a very interesting topic, there are so many other more engaging things to think about and write about.

I do feel pretty lucky that I'm not so great at playing and singing, it forces me to make sure I've really got something worth presenting because I can't rely on any kind of virtuosity to dazzle people with.

The funny thing is that some reviews are published in magazines and websites that are seen by millions of people, and other reviews are in very small publications or less popular websites, and you just have to be lucky to have the good reviews land in places where more people see them, and bad reviews land in places where they will be less seen.

It's all easier said than done, and it isn't even easy to say.

A lot more people will want to hear a 5-minute singing cartoon about Communism in China than will want to read that PhD thesis, and that's the power of it even if a lot of details will be missing - that's the reason something like that often has more impact on society.

I never felt like I had a surface image to rely on that people would like - I always felt like my music would not be very fancy music, my voice is not very fancy, there is nothing hiding me from the audience.