Top 66 Borns Quotes

I feel very short-attention span for like accomplishment. It’s like ‘oh that felt really good’ and then it’s kind of like an immediate emptiness of I need to make something else – I don’t like to dwell on things too long.

I don’t want to make a living. I want to make a life.

When I first moved to L.A., I lived in the Hills in kind of a wooded area that was just really chill.

It’s very easy in the studio to get overzealous with your vocal takes, thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I can do it over and over. I can sing at the top of my range for this whole song.’ But when you’re doing it every night on the road, it’s pretty intense.

I find inspiration from a lot of different texts and really old stories and folk tales – things I feel like no one else is reading.

We’re always trying to make advancements in the arts and technology, so it’s somewhat inevitable that we’re going to make holograms of people.

My vocal influences are a lot of jazz singers: Billie Holiday, Julie London, they had this tenderness to their voice.

The more you practice something, the more you are aware of what you’re doing.

Performing is an exchange of a lot of energy and it can wipe you out.

That’s the worst and best thing about being in the studio, feeling completely lost and not knowing how to put the final touch on something. But once you find it, there’s nothing like that feeling.

I have these lacy shirts that look kind of like my grandma’s curtains that I wear.

A magic show and a concert are very similar in the way I like keeping things a mystery and not doing them the same way every time. The listener and the audience never know what’s going to happen next.

I like to put coconut oil in my hair if it’s looking dry. It’s so unruly. It has a mind of its own.

I’m always trying to top the last show.

As far as playing instruments, it just feels good to have it under your hands. Cause sometimes those instruments have minor imperfections. Sometimes because they’re so old, they’re always out of tune a little bit.

Most of the time, it’s pretending I’m somebody else to get into a different head space. A lot of times, it’s just, ‘Who do I want to be onstage tonight? Is it going to be Marc Bolan, or is it going to be Grace Jones, or Roy Orbison?’

The music scene in Michigan is really folky and bluegrass, but my parents played a lot of disco. They really liked to dance.

I did a lot of magic shows growing up. My dad is a graphic designer so he helped me brand myself and create a logo. So I was just rollin’ with the magician crowd for a while. But I was really young, 10 to 13, doing table magic and balloon animals at this Italian restaurant.

I had a band when I was in middle school, but I was the drummer. I kind of thought if I was going to be in a band, I’d be the drummer. I’m innately drawn to rhythm. But we didn’t have any shows. We just jammed in our parents’ basement.

I have a short attention span.

I like to buy books at airports sometimes.

The Internet is a crazy archive of a lot of old everything. Paintings, drawings, old, new, and everything in between.

I feel like piano is my main instrument. I’m most comfortable on the piano.

My parents bought this baby grand piano, which was in my living room, that I owe a lot to. I would just play it and write on it for hours. It was my favorite toy.

I don’t really know what emotions are going to come out in songs when I’m writing them until I step back and listen to them as a whole.

Yeah, moving to Los Angeles definitely influenced my sound.

I grew up with a big backyard that led to the sand dunes of Lake Michigan.

A lot of people think I’m a chick. It happens the most at airports. The flight attendants will always say, ‘Have a nice flight, Ms. Borns.’ It must be the hair.

I feel like I’m never playing the same sized venues within two or three shows. It keeps me and the band fit in a way. It keeps us on our toes just because you don’t get used to one size and one energy. It’s good to switch it up.

I’m a professional musician.

I dance as best I can. I try to let the music flow freely through my legs.

I’ve gotten to play some cool venues, like at an aquarium in La Jolla, California.

My folks bought a baby grand piano and that’s where I did the majority of figuring out the songs I heard on the stereo.

That’s one thing I really wanted to work on after ‘Dopamine,’ my falsetto.

To make a genuine record, it takes more than a cool beat and some auto tune.

If you’ve never been to Michigan, everyone thinks it’s completely rural. It’s a destination state. You don’t really drive through; you’re going there for a reason.

Allowing yourself to suck is the hard part of writing music. If you allow yourself to suck, you will probably write something better.

When I was growing up, there were a few musicians who would have regular gigs at restaurants, and I always thought it was so cool and unexpected how they would spontaneously perform. Being the ambitious kid that I was, I got into it and really studied it. I was so inspired by it.

I grew up with my mother as a Tonic Shaman.

I’m not growing out my hair just to be androgynous.

A lot of people hear things on the radio and try to make their own version of that.

I guess that’s always the mystery of music. It’s like why does this song make me feel so grey or why does it make me feel sad or happy or nostalgic and so I’m most fascinated by breaking that down in my music.

I do like how the music can be misunderstood.

I feel like music is always alive and well.

I remember seeing an interview from the Bee Gees and they were like, ‘The biggest competition to the Bee Gees is the Bee Gees.’ They just kept trying to top themselves and write better songs, and I’m just always trying to do that.

I love learning how people hear my music because everyone has different references.

I like the idea of creating from your inner youth. You don’t have to think too hard about it. Just make what feels good.

There’s this poet named Walter Benton, I really like his stuff. He always uses landscapes as a metaphor for the female body.

I always found creative ways to make money since I was pretty young kid.

There’s beautiful things about tour – you’re seeing the world, spreading music and I’m able to call that what I do. But it’s about living lightly and abandoning things.

I feel like I’m always just trying to write better music and keep topping myself.

I like a lot of older, ’60s or ’70s-style songwriting.

My mom’s really into astrology and she’s always telling me about the moon cycles and stuff like that.

My folks would have parties and all I wanted was to be the entertainment.

I’m fascinated by the yin and yang of everything.

Hopefully I inspire people just to lose themselves a little bit. That’s what I enjoy doing on stage: challenging myself with a new territory, like performing differently, moving differently, singing differently, just let people know that it’s okay just to do something that they’ve never done before.

My parents played the Bee Gees; Earth, Wind & Fire; Michael Jackson. The best pop music to infiltrate a child’s mind.

I really like Colin Blunstone, the lead singer of the Zombies.

A big piece of my heart is definitely in Michigan and will always be in Michigan. Growing up there is definitely a big part of who I am as a person.

Circuses don’t treat their ‘performers’ very well – whipping them, trying to make them terrified.

My music diet growing up was lots of sugar. Lots of retro-pop sugar. Motown, disco. A lot of English rock, like the Turtles, the Zombies, Bowie and stuff like that.

I’m influenced by a lot of different genres of music. So I’m constantly trying to rework production and make things interesting in the live show and on records.

Anything that makes life more of a dance party I’m very much okay with.

Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can’t look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It’s human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don’t. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.

There’s a book called ‘The Baron in the Trees.’ A friend got that for me because I was kind of a tree-dwelling nomad for a bit. I kind of associate myself with the book.

Dreams are pretty unexplainable. Have you ever tried to explain a dream to someone, and they’re like ‘Yeah, that sounds not as exciting as you think it is?’