There's more women stars in Nashville all the time. They're proving they can do the job the same as a man.
It used to be that Nashville would work to develop promising artists.
I wanted to become a better songwriter, so it seemed like a no-brainer to move to Nashville, where some of the best writers in the world live.
I have this friend who has a theory that lots of towns have energies. And, for instance, certain places in Alabama have bad ones because they were built on reservations or built on cemeteries or something. But Nashville has a really gravitational, magnetic pull.
I think there are too many bosses in Washington telling Nashville Diesel College and Harvard University how to run - how to run their campuses, and I'd like to reduce the number of Washington regulations on higher education and keep this marketplace of wonderful institutions among which students can choose; that's oriented toward job growth.
I will always really work hard to write as much as I can, but I also love sitting back and waiting on those big Nashville songwriters to send me some great songs, too.
One of the magical things about Nashville is just how many incredibly talented people are here and the way they support each other.
There's nothing like Nashville for making records.
If I got dropped tomorrow or every single I released from now on tanked, I'd be devastated, but I'd also still be doing this. I'd still be writing songs. I'd still be recording them. I was doing that for four years in Nashville. This is just on a larger stage.
Going to Nashville to meet the in-laws was the first time when I'd been in America and not been seen as some sort of eccentric character with a cute accent.
I can only say the first thing that pops into my mind is I remember, years ago, seeing kind of a has-been country singer working - when I first moved to Nashville - in a bar in a Holiday Inn.
We're trying to tell a very full story of 'Nashville' and these characters in Nashville, and I'm really hopeful that we're going to be able to do something as innovative as 'American Horror Story' and 'Friday Night Lights.' And I think so far, we're on the right path for that.
Back in the early '90s, I started going to Nashville to do a lot of co-writes. One of the first people I met there was Keith Follese. Keith and his wife Adrienne are both songwriters, and we wrote some songs together.
I was writing and playing in California for 11 years before I moved to Nashville.
I think Charlottesville was shocking for some, but it wasn't for me or for my family, I mean, because I grew up in 1980s Nashville.
Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.
Nashville is only a couple of hours from New York, and people just move at a slower pace there - and they don't care who you are or what you do.
With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.'
Several years ago, I was asked by a songwriter's association to go to Nashville - I think it involved some kind of award - and be part of the showcase. It was myself and Stevie Winwood and Michael McDonald and then some country people that I didn't know. The whole community was just so welcoming to me.
There was a time when I was - after my very first record from Nashville, I thought I might not be one of those who actually really makes it, and I may end up back in Canada, just playing clubs. And that might - this might have just been it.
I have no regrets. I feel very grateful for the life that I had - you know, family I live with; and I've been doing work that I love, ever since I came to Nashville.
'I'm Sorry' was one of the first songs to come out of Nashville using strings.
Nashville has become sort of this go-to writing city for every genre.
Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.
There's a song called 'Live Blogging the Himmel Family Bris.' I kind of went for it here in terms of - it was really fun to be explaining ritual circumcision in Nashville - a lot of brises are done in hospitals, but many are done in people's homes, and there's a lot of food, and a lot of leftovers.
There's been a lot of talk about Jack White wanting to work with me, and I've always admired him, and of course, he lives in Nashville, too.
When I was 13, I started writing songs, and it fell into my lap all of a sudden. I wrote poems and journals, but that's when it switched for me to songwriting. That's when I wanted to do everything. It was like a fire all of a sudden. I started coming to Nashville and moved here when I was 15.
I see interracial couples all the time in Nashville. I'm a Jew in Nashville. I'm a gay person in Nashville. It's a non-issue in most of the time. That's a huge leap forward.
The only reason I wound up in Nashville and went to Belmont University is because that's where I needed to be.
There is nothing else to do in Nashville except for write songs.
I had never heard much about Nashville before coming out here, and that's why it's so surprising, because I'm the biggest enthusiast on the city of Nashville now. I'm looking for a place out here to live.
A lot of my music is very roots-oriented, and that's country and soul. I've been in every roadhouse in the South, soaking in all of that... Nashville is like a second home to me, and I'm just gravitating toward the songs.
If you can't play guitar and sing in Nashville, you might as well just be a construction worker.
We want to support Nashville, support the community there and be a part of it.
Nashville, I think, for me, personally, would be where I want to live and work. L.A. is a whole other world and has a whole other vibe to it, so I would like to come out here for work for a couple of months, but L.A. is just not really my scene, per se.
I was pretty gung-ho about music and pursuing that and figuring that whole thing out, so I was wide-eyed and ready to go when I moved to Nashville. I never looked back.
