As a songwriter you have an umbilical cord to the song and it's hard to expand on your understanding of the lyrics. Whereas when you cover a song you can create your own reason why you're attached to it. ↗
I think I don't sing as hard as I used to sing. I used to kind of hit the accelerator a lot back in my youth, but now it's just being able to control it, and not work it so hard and use more of an emotional or sub textual kind of approach to singing. ↗
When I got on Stern I realized that this was the one job where you could be really honest and open, almost like Richard Pryor or something. You can be honest about your life and get laughs. ↗