David J. Bertozzi / BuzzFeed

"Carry On." "We Are Young." "Give Me Just a Reason." The list goes on and on — so what happens when you want to talk shop with the man behind multiple hit songs that have dominated popular music over the past few years? Drink. We met Nate Ruess down at Alphabet City Beer Co. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to talk about his brand-new solo album, Grand Romantic, among other topics. The rules of this drinking interview were simple: Nate must answer the question or he has to take a sip. Here's how it all went down.

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

CHEERS!

Would you rather never fall in love or experience love once but never see that person again?

Experience love once.

Would you rather swim in a pool full of pudding or jello?

Jello!

What's your favorite song on your upcoming album?

The song "Grand Romantic"...today. It always changes. OK, I'll drink to that.

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

If you could work with anyone in history who would you collaborate with?

George Washington! You could use those wooden teeth as a wood block.

Are you a dog person or cat person?

Dog person.

What’s your favorite word?

Today it's "conglomerate." Tomorrow it's endoplasmic reticulum.

What about the next day?

...

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

What inspired you to become a musician?

Other music.

What's your dream vacation?

The moon!

Favorite curse word?

Shit, um... Shit?

Beyoncé or Beck?

Beck! But I don't have to choose, so...

What's the last dream you had?

Oh god, I can't...

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

What's your weirdest habit?

Oh god, I think it might be drinking... during the day! It gets weird.

What was your favorite thing about growing up in Arizona?

Leaving Arizona.

Do you have a crazy fan story?

No! Do I have to take a sip for that?

I think so.

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

What was the inspiration behind ‘’Great Big Storm’’?

Just watching my parents or other people around kind of just...struggling to make it, and seeing them make it.

Pick one: the ocean or the city?

The city.

Bacon or Nutella?

Nutella? I take that back! I take it back because I don't keep Nutella around but, like, I try to keep bacon around on the reg. Bacon.

Instagram or Twitter?

Neither?

Why?

Well, I have nothing to share other than my music. Otherwise I'm quite content.

If you could ask Oprah one question, what would it be?

...

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

Do you still have “Dog Problems”?

Always, every day.

Vinyl or MP3?

Vinyl!

What's your favorite season?

Oh, oh, oh... I don't want to drink to this one! I'm going to go with spring.

What’s one thing you haven’t achieved that you would like to?

I would like to run a marathon. Go to college! So that I have an excuse for the drinking.

Would you rather be in love with a girl who “doesn’t get it” or won’t “compromise”?

Won't compromise.

What song on your album best describes you?

All of them — it's, like, my album! Other than the one that talks about me hating children and wanting to kill the whales...

What's the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

"Don't drive your van over 80 miles per hour if it's carrying a trailer or the van will blow up."

Why is there a period in fun.?

Because, because... It's a word that I'm sure there were like a trillion other bands [that had it] and we had to differentiate ourselves.

Are you a "grand romantic"?

Absolutely. I'll drink to that.

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

You came up with “Nothing Without Love” in the shower. Are there other songs you’ve written in the shower?

Yeah, every day. My best songs and worst songs, all in the shower. I have a shower where I know that my neighbors can't hear me, so I just go to town.

How do you know they can't hear you, though?

I more so hope and pray. I also put the recording studio in my house — they hate me.

If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want to be stranded with?

The cast of Lost? I don't know. Tom Hanks in Castaway? A ball with the face on it? Gilligan! I'd absolutely be stuck with Gilligan.

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

Are you still not as sad as you used to be?

No, I'm sadder. Quite sadder. But I'm also happier than I used to be.

What's the first thing you’d grab in a fire?

I'm burning down.

What would you do if you weren’t a musician?

Go to college! Get an education. I don't know specifically because I've never been but I hear you do this [drinking], at least from what I've heard.

You've played many colleges, though.

I have played colleges. Things have gone very badly.

What’s the best thing about being a solo artist?

I'm totally responsible for my own schedule so I can be like, I don't wanna do that, or not have to discuss that with anybody. And then I can go back to bed.

What’s the hardest thing about being solo?

Approving photos of my face. I don't like to look at it.

What’s the best thing about being in a band?

I think it's that you kind of link up, three people collectively becoming one brand.

What’s the hardest thing about being in a band?

Three people collectively becoming one brand.

Which song on your new album took the longest to write?

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

I will drink to that because they all ended up taking a long-ass time, but I adhere to "if it's a good song, it shouldn't take that long to write." But I did sit with certain lyrics forever, like, being precious about it, so.

Is there anything else we should know about the album?

On the Beck song I knew what I wanted the guitar solo to be played so I just sang it — which, I've sang guitar solos on songs before — but on this one it's cool because I'm looking over and Beck is trying to play a song where I'm like, "Meow, meow."

When I sign a guitar solo on an album it kind of sounds like a cat, because I sing meow, meow, meow, meow... I do that, but then I try to sound as much like a guitar as possible.

What was it like working with Beck?

He's about the coolest person I've ever met.

Whitney Jefferson / BuzzFeed

...Do I have to finish this thing?

Your choice!

Grand Romantic is out now and available wherever music is sold.

Living a better life, one post at a time.

When Jurassic World took a delicious turn.

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And sushi and burritos had a little baby.

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When these tattooed parents showed their little ones some love.

Fuse / Getty Images

When the In-N-Out not-so-secret menu got even more appealing.

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Facebook: BuzzFeedFood

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These ladies were ruling the lunchroom way before “The Plastics.”

You can thank me later.

When even the rain couldn't handle him.

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When he made a collage of his selfies.

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When this April fools' joke became too real.

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When he did this and everyone forgot how to speak.

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You and your Clone Club, that is.

This "Sestra" Ring, $13.99

Buy two and give one to your bestie so you're true sestras.

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Minimalistic Clone Poster, $19.50

All your faves in one shot.

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This iPhone case inspired by Cosima, $25

Put this one on your burner phone.

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Or this iPhone case for everyone who's fave is Alison, $25

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The pope says climate change is ruining the world, while a doctor loses his license for performing horrific sexual experiments on students. Here’s your fix of science stories from BuzzFeed and around the web.

Before He Was A Science Reporter, Dan Vergano Was A Climate Change Denialist. Here's How He Came To Jesus On Global Warming.

John Ritter for BuzzFeed News / Pope: Getty Images / Via gettyimages.com

This Doctor Just Lost His License For Performing Horrifying Sexual Experiments On His Students

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Handout via Reuters

No, Eating Chocolate Won't Save You From Having A Stroke

giphy / Via giphy.com

After A 7-Month Sleep, Philae, The Comet Lander, Phones Home

ESA / Via Twitter: @ESA_Rosetta

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A whole new world of pain.

When you wake up and forget, for a second, where you are and what you did last night.

Walt Disney / Via disneyscreencaps.com

When you sit up and realise you're still a lil bit tipsy.

Walt Disney / Via disneyscreencaps.com

And then suddenly the whole room is spinning and you think you might die.

Walt Disney / Via disneyscreencaps.com

When you're incapable of doing anything but lying down and being still.

Walt Disney / Via buzzfeed.com

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Take a seat.

Whoever was on the end of this scientific burn.

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This unfortunate paintballer.

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Sean who can apparently suck it.

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This child who was burned by his own mother.

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Illustration by Jing Wei for BuzzFeed

Last year, my husband, Brian, and I went to an informational seminar at a respected adoption agency in Los Angeles. We’d gotten the name of the agency through friends of friends, and as we walked down the long hallway to the conference room where roughly a half dozen other couples had also assembled to learn about adoption, Brian whispered to me, “Do you think we’ll be the only gay couple there?”

It turns out, we were. And, at least superficially, it was totally fine: If anyone in the room had any problem with a gay male married couple adopting a child, Brian and I never felt it.

But the experience still forced me to confront two uncomfortable truths: One, I know next to nothing about adoption, and two, it is genuinely upsetting to me that I, in fact, cannot get pregnant.

I want to be clear: I am not holding out hope for a miracle of science or nature, and I do not spend my days looking at mpreg images on the internet (although, I mean, they are fascinating). My desire to get pregnant is figurative, not literal, and yet it is not in my experience something cis men — straight or gay — talk about, so I’m not really sure how alone I am in wrestling with this quixotic frustration. Regardless, as I’ve watched so many straight couples I know go through the familiar stages of pregnancy, I’ve been hit with an ugly pang of bitterness and envy. It seems so damn easy, I catch myself thinking, even as I know better about how harrowing getting pregnant can be. It must be nice just to be able to grow a baby and not have to jump through red tape and drain away your savings so you can become a parent.

These are not the feelings I expected to have as my husband and I started investigating how we will become fathers. Brian and I starting talking about being parents within weeks of our first date, when we casually established that we both wanted kids, and then we both realized privately what it meant for our budding relationship that talking about wanting kids hadn't freaked us out. As things progressed from dating to boyfriends to fiancés to husbands, we've subsequently talked through just about every facet of what becoming fathers would look like — from the floor plan for the nursery to our philosophies about establishing boundaries for our children to “jokes” about naming our daughter Lorelai. And at the end of 2014, after six and a half years together, we resolved that in 2015 we would officially start the adoption process and become fathers for real. In January, we did. And now, six months later, we're no farther along in the process than we were then. And it’s taken me just about that long to comprehend why.

Ever since I had the capacity to understand that one day I could be a father, I’ve always known that one day I would be. But it's only been in the last few years that I've really come to terms with the fact that becoming a father isn’t a given for many gay men. I’ve seen from afar other gay men who are fathers; I’ve read Dan Savage’s gay adoption memoir The Kid; and, like the rest of the world, I’ve delighted at Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka’s picture-perfect twins. But in my personal life, I don’t know any other gay fathers. Brian and I know several sets of lesbian parents, but we have no model for what the day-to-day experience of being gay dads looks like.

Of course, Brian and I have plenty of models for what being a new straight parent looks like. Our Facebook and Instagram feeds are swathed with photos of adorable babies staring up in wonder at the fuzzy world they can barely see, let alone comprehend, and my sister texts photos and videos of her unspeakably darling son at such a regular clip that I get anxious if a few days have passed and I don’t have a new shot of my nephew’s face.

We’ve watched our friends wrestle with poopy diapers, struggle with epic sleep deprivation, and fret over why their kid isn’t walking yet. We’ve seen firsthand that sleep training can be excruciating, and the impotent terror when your infant is really sick and you cannot make it better. And, of course, we’ve also experienced the transformative joy of a baby’s simple smile, and witnessed the look of exhausted satisfaction and profound love that smile can spark in the faces of new parents. At this point, Brian and I feel like we know as well as any couple who don’t yet have a baby, straight or gay, can know about what it means to be a parent.

But here’s what we don’t know, what we haven’t seen firsthand, what has paralyzed me from moving forward, and what — checking my privilege here — has for the first time in my life made me feel actively disadvantaged as a gay man: What it means to become a parent.

I hate feeling this way. And the thing is, it’s not like I somehow desperately yearn for a biological child — even if I did, surrogacy remains prohibitively expensive for me and Brian — and I definitely do not think my as-yet entirely hypothetical adopted child would be some kind of compromise. Your kid is your kid is your kid, and I’ve known that just about as long as I’ve know I’ve wanted to be a father. It’s just that the more I learn about the adoption process, the more I find myself wishing for that miracle of science or nature so I can enjoy the heteronormative privilege of wanting to be a parent and then simply making it happen, without a social worker visiting my apartment, an adoption lawyer taking my money, and the constant worry about whether Brian and I are doing all the right things to convince an expectant mother that we’re the best couple to adopt her child.

These are things, by the way, that I’ve learned only in the last year, and I recognize that I still have so much more I’ve need to learn. It’s been embarrassing to discover just how little I know about what it means to adopt. It is a process that remains distressingly opaque to anyone who isn’t pursuing it, especially considering how much biological childbirth is suffused into our everyday understanding of how the world operates. Before Brian and I walked into that seminar, I knew vaguely that it would take a long time, require a lot of paperwork, and cost a fair amount of money — and that Brian and I were lucky to live in a state where same-sex adoption is legal. (We’ve ruled out international adoption for that very reason.)

Learning the actual details of adoption — from the home visits to make sure it’s a viable place for a child to how domestic private adoption almost always means adopting an infant from birth — has been a great and profound education. But it’s also filled me with an almost crippling anxiety that I will never know enough to make the “right” decision: Which adoption agency would be best for us? Which adoption lawyer? Should we even spend money on an adoption lawyer? Should we focus on an agency and/or lawyer who specializes in same-sex adoption? Does that even matter? Should we focus on just California? How much can we afford to travel outside the state? Will we have enough money for health care for the mother? Are we equipped, financially and emotionally, to pursue adoption within the foster care system? And if we don’t, does that make us terrible people?

All of these questions plunge me back into that bracing pool of exasperation at the multitudes of straight couples blessed with good fertility who have to know only how to have sex in order to become parents. But in my worst moments of panic and frustration, I’ve tried to remind myself of the third discovery Brian and I made in that adoption seminar. Because we were the only gay couple in the room, we were walloped by how being prospective parents who are both men radically changes the emotional calculus of adopting. Like Dan Savage and his boyfriend Terry experienced in The Kid, Brian and I were surrounded by straight couples who were coming to the adoption process because that thing they had taken as a given all their life — their ability to grow a child themselves — was suddenly, perhaps painfully, no longer an option for them. Brian and I always knew the only option for us was to adopt (even if we didn’t really know what that meant), so we were able to show up at that seminar free of the emotional baggage that our bodies had somehow failed us as parents.

It turns out, though, that I walked out of that seminar saddled with the baggage that my and my husband’s bodies would never allow us to become a parents. It is a firm, hard reality, born not of institutional prejudice but of, you know, biology — and yet I now realize I’ve had to mourn it all the same. Facing that has been more challenging than I could have imagined. But here is what has kept me pushing forward, what has never once allowed me to even consider giving up: I know it will be infinitely harder actually being a parent. And I cannot wait for that to happen.

“I feel like a princess… a hairy Jewish princess!”

There's nothing more beautiful than a wedding. Unfortunately, most guys will never know what it's like to walk down the aisle in a wedding dress. Luckily, we fixed that problem and had The Try Guys fitted for their own unique bridal gown.

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First of all, they needed to tell the designer their favorite feature. For Ned, it was DAT ASS.

BuzzFeed Video

Zach wanted to play with, and enhance, his cuteness.

BuzzFeed Video

And Keith, well, Keith's just so beautiful.

BuzzFeed Video

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Total twins. Mild spoiler for OITNB S3.

Guys, it finally happened!

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If you've been living under a rock, Ruby Rose, the Australian actress who stars in the most recent season of Netflix hit Orange Is The New Black, has been blowing up the internet this week.

Netflix

Rose seems pretty happy to fuel the comparison, posting this picture on Instagram a few months ago with the caption "bosom buddies".

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Masterpieces fewer than 140 characters.

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Answer carefully, the night is dark and full of terrors.

Take a trip down Hilary Duff lane.

“Is the Magic School Bus inside me?”

Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed

1. I'm doing it! This is it!
2. Is that a cigarette box? Oh, no, that's the IUD.
3. Ever notice how IUD is one letter away from IED?
4. Why does this pamphlet say no one really knows how they work?
5. Everything is going to be fine.

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6. Can I get an epidural for this? No?
7. Anesthesia? Sure!
8. Your ceiling has 20 tiles!
9. Oh my god, you're putting that needle where?
10. MY HEART IS EXPLODING.
11. That's normal? I don't want to see your definition of "bonkers."
12. Oh no, is that rod a relative of Cold Metal Duck Friend?
13. You're done? The flux capacitor is in?
14. Hey, I feel all right!
15. I'm queen of my uteral castle, and I'm ordering me to bring me a doughnut.
16. Adieu, pills and rings and latex! Suck it, mood swings!

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Love Bombay or hate it, you have to admit: it’s the easiest city in the world to buy a beanbag.

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May your memory be ever in your favor.

Are you more Weasley or Malfoy?

Loose seal.

The fact that no one will read this because it’s about North Dakota.

You freak out if North Dakota is ever mentioned in a TV show or movie.

Dreamworks Pictures

You don't believe that people can't find North Dakota on a map, even though it's the best state of all the states.

ONE DAY EVERYONE WILL BE ABLE TO LOCATE OUR GREAT STATE.

Lifetime

It annoys the hell out of you when people suggest that North and South Dakota merge into one Dakota. Like, WHAT?

NBC

Even though winters seem to never end, during the summers, you're like:

Dreamworks Pictures

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