If there’s a pregnancy rumor, people will find out it’s not true when you wind up not being pregnant, like nine months from now, and if there’s a house rumor, they’ll find out it’s not true when you are actively not ever spotted at that house.
I think I have a big fear of things spiraling out of control. Out of control and dangerous and reckless and thoughtless scares me, because people get hurt.
I think the perfection of love is that it’s not perfect.
You can’t be in love with a Google search.
Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.
Vanity can apply to both insecurity and egotism. So I distance myself, because I feel everything.
Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.
Rebellion is what you make of it. When you’ve been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious.
Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.
I once went on the most grueling radio tour. Living in hotel rooms, sleeping in the backs of rental cars as my mom drove to three different cities in one day.
Seeing a live Kenny Chesney show, you know what you’re going to get. You know it’s going to be an all-day party.
It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.
I get nervous for everything – literally everything.
I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.
Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.
I’m a Sagittarius, and one of our major qualities is that we’re blindly optimistic.
I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.
It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.
My fans don’t feel like I hold anything back from them. They know whatever I’m going through now, they’ll hear about it on a record someday. They’ll hear the real story. There’s a little bit of lag time. It’s not as instant as going on a gossip blog. But it’s much more accurate.
But, I’ve always loved John Mayer and I think T-Pain is brilliant.
Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.
It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.
Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.
I’ve been singing Shakira songs in front of my bathroom mirror into my hairbrush forever. It’s like a daily routine.
I didn’t always have 14,000 people wanting to hang out with me on a Saturday night.
‘Love Story’ I wrote on my bedroom floor in about 20 minutes.
I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever – wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails.
I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.
If you cry over a guy, then your friends can’t date him. It can’t even be considered.
Here’s what I’ve learned about deal-breakers. If you have enough natural chemistry with someone, you overlook every single thing that you said would break the deal.
I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.
One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.
I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, ‘If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.’
As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, ‘All right, well, I’d like to headline a tour,’ and then when I get there, we’ll see what my next goal is.
I think when people make a record with a goal in mind – like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature – that gets in the way of writing great songs.
I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.
There are no rules when it comes to love.
I try to prepare for everything beyond the extent of preparation.
I get really restless when I haven’t worked for a day and a half. I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!
For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.
I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.
When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill.
If you’re yelling you’re the one who’s lost control of the conversation.
I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.
When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.
I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.
Poetry and lyrics are very similar. Making words bounce off a page.
I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.
I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.
It never mattered to me that people in school didn’t think that country music was cool, and they made fun of me for it – though it did matter to me that I was not wearing the clothes that everybody was wearing at that moment. But at some point, I was just like, ‘I like wearing sundresses and cowboy boots.’
I wouldn’t wear tiny amounts of clothing in my real life so I don’t think it’s necessary to wear that stuff in photo-shoots.
Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans.
Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.
And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.
I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.
I’m never in the same place for more than, like, three days at a time. Things can change from one minute to the next.
I created my MySpace page in eighth grade, because that’s how all my friends talked to each other, so I made one, too. Then, all of a sudden, my friends started putting my songs on their profiles, and then their relatives, their friends in different states did.
Even if you’re happy with the life you’ve chosen, you’re still curious about the other options.
Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.
We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.
My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.
Most of my songs have names of people I’ve met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.
I have to work really hard to get the record deal – I have to spend years at it to get good. I have to practice to be good at guitar.
When I’m 40 and nobody wants to see me in a sparkly dress anymore, I’ll be like: ‘Cool, I’ll just go in the studio and write songs for kids.’
Relationships are like traffic lights. And I just have this theory that I can only exist in a relationship if it’s a green light.
