Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” is officially one of the biggest songs in Billboard Hot 100 history. For Swims, though, it started not with originals, but his YouTube covers that initially brought him attention. Now he admits it was a tough transition to get into writing his own songs.

In a new interview with CBC’s Q, Swims explained:

“I can see why so many people get stuck in a cover world, where they never break out, because it’s just the comparison to yourself to some of the greatest songs on Earth that you’ve sang, that you’ve maybe gotten some notoriety for. It tore me up to be like, ‘How the hell am I ever going to write a ‘[You’re] Still The One?’ […] I was terrified of people just being like, they don’t want to hear any of my stuff.”

He also spoke about learning how to write authentic songs, saying, “It turns out when you’re trying to write something to be relatable, that is so not the relatable thing. I find that if you write things so, so super-ly specific about you, that’s the most relatable thing, the thing that you think only you are going through, because it turns out everybody’s going through the same damn thing.”

Watch the full interview above.