ā[Until this tour, my life followed a pattern.] Make an album, put out the album, go on tour, and it worked like that over and over again, five times in a row. And something a little bit different happened with this last album, and I decided that rather than going right back into the studio and putting out an abum and tour, I decided it might be important for me to take a break and just figure out who I would be as a person if I didnāt have a spotlight on me. And see, hereās the thing, the fact that you would cheer for that, it just shows that Iām so lucky to have you, to have people like you that care about my music, because the fact that you would cheer for me saying that I needed to take some personal time is like the most understanding thing in the world. So when I did that, took some time, it turned out it was actually really important for me as a person to do that, and I did a lot of thinking about what I wanted to make next. And I decided after a lot of thinking and a lot of writing that I wanted to make an album called reputation. I thought a lot about what is our reputation, like what is it actually, and what is the value of it? How does it actually affect us? Is it bigger in our own mind and more influential than it actually is in reality? And I think what I came up with is the reason why the idea of having a reputation that doesnāt feel like itās reflective of who you are as a person is that weāre all looking for, and I donāt think we should ever be ashamed of this, weāre looking for love, weāre looking for connection, weāre looking for friendship. And I think that a lot of us worry that if people are saying things about us behind our backs that arenāt true, that feels like something fake to us. And we worry that something fake like a reputation could get in the way of us finding something real, like someone we could really share a life with. And I guess after a lot of thinking, I just came to terms with the fact that when it comes to relationships and reputations, itās all just very delicate, you know what I mean?ā
