Top 25 Bonnie McKee Quotes

I was invincible. I believed all my problems were gone and I finally made it, that L.A. was my answer to everything.

I think what it means to be an ‘American Girl,’ and what I wrote the song about, is our freedoms. The idea that we as Americans can be what we want to be and say what we want to say and that we take it for granted.

A lot of times, if you’re not getting inspiration right away, we’ll listen to stuff to get inspired.

In my mind, I imagined L.A. to be skyscrapers on the beach. Of course, that’s not what it actually looks like. And growing up watching ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ and ‘Melrose Place,’ I always had an obsession with L.A. and California in general.

I always had the fantasy of Hollywood and Los Angeles and the beach, not realizing that Hollywood was so very far from the beach.

When I’m writing for other people, I have to play it safe.

I was discovered out of nowhere. I didn’t have family that was in the industry. I didn’t know anyone in L.A.; I didn’t have any reason to have been discovered. Nowadays, you have YouTube, and people are scouting more, but I really was plucked out of obscurity.

‘Teenage Dream’ was the most difficult song I’ve ever been a part of. We wrote five different versions of it. We couldn’t get the lyrics right. Max Martin and Dr. Luke wrote most of the melody, and then Katy Perry and I were responsible for getting the lyrics right.

When I moved to Seattle in fourth grade, I joined the Seattle Girls’ Choir. It’s a world-class choir, and we competed, toured Europe, and went and sang at the Vatican, so it was a really awesome experience to have that young.

The original title was ‘Waking Up Diagonal’. It’s the first line of the song. I just thought it was more interesting than ‘I Don’t Care’, which is such a boring title to me. When I hear that song, it breaks my heart a little bit because it’s my story.

When my parents were like, ‘We’re going to the Northwest,’ I thought, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’ I was so depressed. The cold weather really did not agree with me. When I moved back down to L.A. at 16, I felt like it was home – it was where I belonged.

People like hearing songs that sound like something they’ve heard before, that’s reminiscent of their childhood and of what their parents listened to.

I was born in Northern California and lived there until I was about eight years old. Then my parents moved me up to Seattle. I lived there from ages eight to 16. When I was a California kid, I remember running around in my bathing suit and barefoot all the time and getting a suntan.

I wish I wrote ‘Don’t Speak’ by No Doubt. I mean, that is a classic heartbreak song; it gets me every time.

I had never really co-written. I thought it was weak or something if I needed to collaborate.

When I write for myself, I think about myself and draw from my own experience.

For ‘Dynamite,’ Max and Luke went to dinner and left me with a melody, and then I put it together.

One thing I’d tell an up-and-coming singer is to never rely on other people for anything. The more self-sufficient you can be, the better off you’ll be.

When I get an artistic itch, I have to scratch it.

I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people’s songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels – whatever little girls sing about.

I’m kinda famous for my barbecues – I’m always hosting parties.

A line has to have a certain number of syllables, and the next line has to be its mirror image.

I know ‘Hallelujah’ isn’t actually a Christmas song, but it has that cozy, haunting vibe that sounds like a winter’s night and belongs by a fire.

I’ve always had a teenage thread running through my music.

I wanted to make a video for the holidays, but none of the traditional holiday songs were moving me.