The song “Leaving LA” has you recounting a formative bad memory associated with pop music—when you choked in a JCPenney while Fleetwood Mac’s “Little Lies” played in the store. Do you remember the first bit of pop music that stuck with you in a good way?

Michael Bolton’s Soul Provider. I was in a carpool when I was in fourth grade, and my friend Andy Greenfield’s mom would listen to that album all the time. I loved it. I thought he wrote absolutely beautiful songs: “How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends?” Andy gave me a copy of it for my birthday because he knew that I loved it so much. But I had to hide it at school, I couldn’t even take it home. The other album was Peter Gabriel’s So; it was the only secular album that was allowed at home.

Michael Bolton wasn’t allowed but Peter Gabriel was?

Michael Bolton wasn’t allowed because of the fact that he was long-haired, and when he first started out he was kind of a hard rocker. But when you’re a child, it is possible to fall in love with music as a thing. I just liked hearing sequential sounds in premeditated modular movements. You start from there, then you begin the refinement process.

You helped write Beyoncé’s “Hold Up” and a couple of songs on Lady Gaga’s latest album. Do you still like pop music?

The more important question is: What does the word “like” mean?

To have a genuine reaction to something—an enjoyment that is not ironic.

OK, let me tell you as someone who made a grotesque foray into this world—because I have also been subjected to this music my whole life and wanted to know how the sausage was made just out of fucking morbid curiosity—there is nothing not wildly audience-tested and calculated about this fucking music. Exempting myself from this conversation, the people who get accused of being calculated? Psht! It’s truly a joke.

What do you mean by that?

Someone in the indie world is more likely to be accused by other indie people of being over-thinking, calculated psychos, when this whole fucking world of pop music has been [calculated]. It’s all this bourgeois bullshit. It’s neo-Orientalism. It’s basically like, “Since I’m special and exist in a place of pure exemption, then this thing that the normies like is the working man’s music.” There could not be a more potent form of soft bigotry than that whole thing.

I get to say this as someone who does not listen to that music in that way. If you asked me: “Have I ever enjoyed pop music?” Yes! Of course. If I am in a dance club and I am drunk and I’m with a beautiful woman or a group of friends, and a fun song comes on, that’s one thing. But you’re talking about people who are talking about this music, sitting at their desks, listening to 100 other songs that are indie songs and going, “I’m sick of this. This indie shit is too indie. Blegh!”

When you lionize pop music, you lionize the very thing that feminism purports to be against, which is a culture of exploitation and overcharging. Which is what cracks me the fuck up when you read these ridiculous puff pieces about how wonderful major-labor pop music is, and the whole fucking industry is run like you actually buy into the idea that that woman that’s onstage, wearing next to nothing, is powerful. Because that is like being a child.

So you probably won’t write for pop stars again then?

If you think that pop stars are anything other than prisoners, then you are fucking kidding yourself. I know them. They are crying for help in their music. We think that we’re doing the world a favor by recognizing the innate wholesomeness of this form of music, like, “Oh, I don’t know, it’s just fun! Something that was made to be liked!” But why do you think that Lady Gaga or Beyoncé would come to old Uncle Jerry over here for songs if they weren’t looking for something? If they weren’t like, “Get me away from these fucking psychos.” Both of them know I’m not running around looking for these gigs. I’ve just done co-writes with those two people. The only reason it happened is because people played them my music and then they asked me to write for them. It’s as simple as that. I have no interest in doing it.