You either have to sing about being scorned by a lover or sing about thinking a boy is cute and wanting him to notice you. That’s about as edgy as you can get.
I love pop music, I love country music.
Being on the stage is the one place I don’t get nervous. Before the show is another story, but once I’m up there, and the first chord hits, I go to this other place. It’s like a dream land.
Just to be nominated, and especially as a new artist and a female artist, is a feat. Winning anything is just a bonus.
I was rejected from ‘American Idol’ – and I’m happier for it now.
I’m a control freak, even though I can be scatterbrained off stage. The only way I can have fun is if I know where everything is.
Even when a drunk guy, a program director, was slurring his words and telling me what to do with my career, I didn’t react to him in a negative way. You kind of have to joke back with them to put them in their place.
Definitely scatterbrained. I internalize a lot of thoughts, and sometimes it seems like I’m not listening or totally zoned out, but I’m always on a loop of ideas and song titles. I’m definitely kind of a space cadet, but I’m very laid back.
I did choir, soccer, some theater. The only weird thing about my life was that I was playing honky-tonks on the weekends.
I was 14, and I played this club that’s no longer there because it was poorly managed: the Texas Tea House in Fort Worth.
The songwriting community in Nashville really is all about your talent. It’s not about your image, and you have to be humble. You have to be kind. You have to have zero ego when you walk into that writing room.
I love listening to the radio because there’s something about that discovery, that platform, still being the main medium. And it is changing with streaming services, but I like to listen to what people are listening to and figure out why is this song so catchy.
I would love to see Regina Spektor, Bjork, and some really cool-sounding festival bands like ‘Metric’ and ‘The Cardigans,’ who are one of my favorite bands.
Don’t forget to celebrate. When I was first coming up, everything was so serious – we were always rushing to get to the next thing – that we didn’t take the time to say, ‘Man, look what we did just now.’
‘My Church’ – that was really the tipping point of me going from songwriter to artist.
As a songwriter, I feel like, just for inspiration and research purposes, I have to listen to everything.
There’s not a lot of good content to write about when you’re 13 years old, so you just have to kind of fake it.
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