MTV: What's the story behind "She's on Fire?"
Underwood: It's about this girl who suffers from pyromania, is that what they call it?
Monahan: No, it's about a girl who's in this freak bus accident. I worked in a restaurant for a long time and me and my dorky friends would go in the back by the dumpster with our case of beer that we threw in a garbage can earlier that day. We'd just [sit around and] talk about all the chicks we were gonna pick up. But none of us could pick up a chick [even] with a chick picker-upper. It was just a story about those dreams when we were kids about all the girls we wish we could've gotten [who] were so fine. [RealVideo]
MTV: What about "Respect"?
Monahan: I used to be really mean when I was a kid. It's kind of about that.
Underwood: He's still really mean, to tell you the truth.
Monahan: "Respect" is just about realizing later on that you should've treated somebody better or been treated better.
MTV: You have a Jay Leno appearance coming up in June. I was
wondering if it gets nerve-racking performing to this little audience, but also for a bigger audience that you really can't see?
Monahan: It's not really nerve-racking playing in front of the audiences anymore. I think the first one we ever did was Conan O'Brien and, man, that was nerve-racking.
MTV: Do you ever watch yourself on tapes and say, "Maybe I shouldn't be making that face," or "Why am I moving like that?"
Monahan: We were just having a conversation about that the other
day, except our conversation went, "I think I need to cut my own head off
and have somebody else's head on my body."
MTV: Let's talk about the video [for "Drops of Jupiter"]. How was that?
Underwood: We had an idea for this one, but it was sort of a collaboration after a while. It's almost a literal interpretation of Pat's lyrics, just a girl on a journey of self-discovery.
Monahan: But she was really cute and she was taking way too much video time away from us. So we thought, "Let's just get rid of
that one, let's get rid of that scene, you know the one with her in it." And then we cut all of her out.