“If this had been my first record, it would have been one thing, but this was my sixth or seventh album. I had already been through the hopes-and-expectations phase of recording, but this one did feel special to me because of the musicians involved.

“I had hit a stride in my songwriting after making the Slow Dancer record. Something clicked inside of me, and I had a little bit of a better direction for myself. Finding such camaraderie with the musicians, that was a big hit, a real thrill, but I didn’t have any expectations about what it might become.

“Lowdown was the one that we were particularly surprised with in the studio; it’s the one that we felt we had hit a nerve with. But we were talking about it and saying, ‘It’s too bad that this is the one that we really nailed, because it’ll never be a single or a hit – it’s just too strange for the times.’”