"I would say that my previous albums were more concept records, where I would have a theme or something in particular, culturally, that I was trying to say, and then I would create the whole album around that concept.

"With this record, because of where I was in my life -- you know, I had been, how do you say it, a 'star' for like 7 years, and I had been in the public eye since I was 22 years old or so -- and I was trying to figure out on this record, how am I gonna connect to people if I'm so alienated? I can't go into a restaurant and just say 'hi' to somebody and have them be normal - usually they are screaming, or want a picture. So, the difference is that I really tried to erase fame from my mind when I was in the studio, and spend a lot of time with my family, a lot of time with my friends.

"I'm so grateful to Mark Ronson, and to the guys for being my close friends now, and having new friends that are musicians, because I feel like I have a place that I belong; I just don't really fit in in Hollywood, you know? So, in this album, there's a much more personal approach that the new men in my life required of me. They were like, 'We want you to go deeper.' Mark would always say to me, 'I want the world to see the girl that I know, sitting at that piano, banging on the keys, screaming her head off'... Because of that, I wrote about - with them - very personal things in my life, and they embraced me as a woman, as my father's daughter, as my mother's daughter, as my sister's sister... it became what I always imagined it would have been like in the 70s or the 60s or the 80s, when people made music and made records and really got together before the internet, and e-mail, and all that stuff. That's what I would say the biggest difference is. It's very, very personal, and it's not conceptual."