I grew up listening to popular music. My father was a Peruvian folk singer. He played the guitar at home. He sang songs with a waltzing rhythm, yet you can still hear the Spanish influences. I accompanied him to his performances.
I was creator and executive producer of 'The Brady Bunch' on TV. The stage version was done by others, but it was a repeat of the old scripts. The 'Gilligan' musical is a completely original work with all seven characters and 18 original songs.
I was classically trained. But more than just the fact that I play violin, there's a lot of classical elements in the way I write, in the way I hear chords. A lot of times, I think of my songs as a symphony made out of electronics rather than instruments. And I love to do orchestral arrangements of my songs after they're done.
Every year on my birthday, I start a new playlist titled after my current age so I can keep track of my favorite songs of the year as a sort of musical diary because I am a teenage girl.
I do disagree with the way videos of my songs have been made. 'Afreen Afreen' is a very powerful song; it did not require such a video. The emphasis should be on the song. Again, I have told my recording company, and in the future, they will screen the video only after my approval.
I think I write very good songs. But I don't know if anybody could record my songs with as much fervor. They sound good sung by me, and they especially sound good with my band.
I wrote 'Ohio,' and it was really awesome to be able to share that with my fans because a lot of them can relate to not having a parent in their life. It's really one of my favourite songs to sing live.
Most of the time, the lyrics are kind of like my secret messages to my friends or my boyfriend or my mom or my dad. I would never tell them that these songs are about them or which specific lyric is about somebody. Often, when I sit down to write a lyric, it is in the heat of the moment, and something has just happened.
A song like 'Heartbreaker,' it's a song about learning - it's not necessarily a song about heartbreak. It's more than that. We write those songs to relive how we got over something.
For years, I've written narrators who aren't gender-identified. When I do autobiographical stuff, that's different, obviously. But I've always tried to keep my songs as potentially not a man's thing.
Irony is the recourse of the weak-minded wimp, I think. I hate bands that deliver their songs with knowing smiles on their faces, so that if those songs fall flat they can say 'Ah well, we never really meant it anyway.' It's so dishonest.
It's a great thing that the United States has given the rest of the world - no other country has given such great popular music to the Far East and Europe. When I play those great countries, a lot of times, the audience starts singing the songs with me. They know them. They love them.
I don't really set out to please anybody, and I don't think I ever have. I have occasionally been encouraged to try to write something specifically for the purpose of releasing it as a single to get radio play. Those are not my best songs, as a rule.
'Something More' is a song that I wrote not necessarily about country radio, more so about a lot of songs that were being pitched to me. I wrote that after song after song after song was just the same song, just a different melody, so I was just looking for something more to put on the record.
I think a show is more of an interacting with fans than you just singing songs.
Most country songs, certainly all the stuff I've written, are stories driven by characters.
With any cover, I like to choose songs that affected me strongly already. So it's tough sometimes to take a song that you love so much and put your own spin on it because you get such a strong feeling from the original.
For some reason, I'm really comfortable talking about my personal life in songs.
I love characters songs and I love to fit into a story. I love singing through a character's journey.
I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.
Typically, the theme of my albums, if there is a theme, is, 'How does it feel?' And that always leads to love songs. It just does.
Most of the songs I wrote are personal.
I dream crazy vivid dreams. Like, entire movies. And sometimes I write songs about them.
I'm trying to find the balance and do, like, 'Spanglish' music or some songs in Spanish and others in English or do a translation.
My brother says that I was writing songs about fate while he was off playing soccer. Now I tell him he's 33 and being a professional while I'm playing soccer with my friends. Ha!
I remember starting out and covering songs.
As far am I'm concerned, I don't listen to radio anymore. They play the same ten songs over and over again, so why would I?
'Going Back to Cali' is one of my favorite songs because of all the East Coast - West Coast rivalry.
I really want to work with Eminem. I know it will never happen, but I would love if he let me do a hook on one of his songs or he featured on one of my songs. It would be incredible. I've just always admired him since I was young.
The way I look at life, whatever I'm doing at that time in my life is going to be reflected in my songs, for the most part.
I can't see myself just endlessly singing the same songs over and over again.
That little Miley Cyrus... she's like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she's Hannah Montana, but what people don't realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she's 40 years old!
I start a lot of songs and throw them out because the energy is not right. It's almost like the file becomes cursed. I have to delete it.
I try not to put messages in my songs. My only message is man's communication with his fellow man. I want to narrow the gap of strangeness and alienation.
Ever since I released my first album, I've tried not to use minor chords as the main element in songs. The way I sing is too melancholic.
In Latin America, people want you to write beautiful melodies and words. But there are also songs that do well because they show the reality of life.
