Home Life

This is a song that I made the track for first. That's not how I usually write songs. And there was something about it that seemed really eerie, and plasticky, and it felt like an Ikea catalog, and it was like nothing I'd ever done before. And it reminded me, for some reason I just started singing on it, "I think I wanna go home," is what I was singing on it.

And before I knew it, I was walking around the studio with a microphone in my hand and -- it's very unlike me to do these moves, because I usually have a guitar in my hand. But I was doing, like, you know like this thing? Like I'm a smart rapper? This thing? [Mimes rapping] Look at my head. Look at my head as I rap. I rap with my two fingers, from my head to you. And I'm walking around the studio: [sings] "I refuse to believe!" So when you hear that record, that's me walking around the studio like [mimes rapping]. It makes a nice little solo number.

AS: I get a sense on this album of a sort of nostalgia for that kind of domestic, family, tranquil life.

JM: That's been the theme of my entire career, really.

AS: Yeah?

JM: Basically, I don't know how to reconcile this job I have as a musician with this desire to be a guy who stays at home. I even tattooed it on my arms—"Home Life"—as some sort of like, "thug life" alternative tattoo.

I am not a born traveler. It's not in my blood. And so to go from that to suddenly being on tour. I mean I remember this reckoning. You're telling, these 40 places, I have to be there on that day and I have to play at that time. And I just sort of always known that there was some part of me that was not cut out for this. And that's the part of me that wants a home life. And it's a testament to wanting ultimately that has less to do with flight times and more to do with washing crayon off a wall. So the song is called "Home Life," and I thought I would take a track on a major label album to remind myself that that's ultimately where I want to end up.