'My motivation was to woo her in the old romantic sense of the word," the 40-year-old singer tells Radio.com during a phone conversation from his home in L.A. 'I would lay in bed all day with the BBC on mute and I would just write, thinking, 'Will this song make her fall in love with me?' I wasn't even thinking of recording the songs for anybody but her."

Soon enough he had a full body of work, and since the songs did what he set out to accomplish (she fell in love with him and now lives with Radin in L.A.), he decided to release them into the world as his sixth studio album, Onward and Sideways, which hit stores and digital outlets Tuesday (Jan. 6).

'If they had not been successful I might have scrapped them. They are in the true sense a love letter," Radin says. Radin confesses that he didn't pick up the guitar until he was 30 and never had any intention of being a full-time musician. The former teacher said songwriting became the best way for him to communicate his feelings to the people that he loves.

'I'm so bad at telling people how I feel, and that's why I picked up songwriting at such a late age. It really saved my life in a communication sort of way," he reflects. 'With regards to interpersonal communication, I'm just terrible at telling people how I feel and expressing my emotions. And that's why I still do it."