Love is a dog from hell, as it's said, and real emotion is ugly and uncomfortable, and it’s why some people giggle when they see a man keening or screaming or crying -- but Drake knows that all this has to be tempered and digestible to be disseminated and reach as many people as possible.

The problem was, I saw a little too much of myself in these intensely serious, deeply focused young troubadours with their eyes cast downward and their faces bathed in the murky light from their bedroom windows. The revelation was a slow one, but once I saw the pages upon pages of videos of guitar-clutching Oberst disciples, the message was loud and clear: much like these high school-aged shut-ins, you need to lighten up a little. Sidewalks and pigeons and being your own best friend? Moonlight? Having a conversation with your own goddamned window reflection? It was all starting to seem a little overwrought, a little too drenched in false significance and melancholy. I didn’t want to share my personal meaning for the song with hundreds of other sad people, but it looked like I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

‘Sleigh Bells' music has always been about overwhelming your senses, making things so loud and so blurred that you don't know where one thing stops and another ends, how fast the day is passing. Slow things run at double-time, fast things run at half-time; the world runs backwards, slows down, speeds up.’