Even the most dismal and hopeless-sounding Wilco music, to my ears, has always maintained a level of hope and consolation.

I've been obsessed with seeing life through music. My records, my relationship with records, my relationship with rock stars, everything that surrounds it, has been really one of the only ways that I ever started to understand the world.

The sublime moment seems to be only a product of allowing yourself to get through, to get to a lot of stuff in your life, write about a lot of stuff and not edit yourself. That is a great lesson to learn for anybody that writes or creates in anyway, to be able to make something without being good or bad.

Stop trying to treat music like it's a tennis shoe, something to be branded. If the music industry wants to save money, they should take a look at some of their six-figure executive expense accounts. All those lawsuits can't be cheap, either.

We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become - once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK, let's just stream it for free ourselves.

We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.