Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was like, 'Wow, Tommy Hilfiger wants to work with little old me.' All the dots connected, we had a meeting, and everything started to come together.
I've become a voice for young women who are growing up and uncomfortable being vulnerable, uncomfortable with changes, heartbreak - and becoming jaded.
I plan on donating a bunch of guitars to different schools around the country. There could be a new Slash out there, there could be a new Lenny Kravitz.
The studio is the place for me to really confront my feelings and get it all out. I love being in that space and creating, doing what I love, making art.
I've been singing love songs since I was a toddler, I was singing Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and even Alicia Keys song, that helped my writing so much.
We use social media as a platform to speak on issues that we feel passionate about and I see people debating on Twitter all the time about social injustices.
I'm always thinking about Prince when I make my music and how genre-less he was and just how versatile and amazing he was on the stage. I'm so inspired by him.
I used to tell people when I was 15 or 16 that I'd never be that girl who goes through this, gets her heart broken, falls for this guy, but I ended up being her.
I'd rather have quality over quantity. It's about perfecting each song and making sure it's what you want to do. And then even with what I share it's all very strategic.
Before anybody knew who I was, I was just working on what I love and having fun with it, and I'm sticking with that - because, ultimately, that's what people want to see.
After I graduated from high school, I was like, let's see what happens. I took the time to develop my artistry and my songs, and tried to figure out who I am and what my message is.
It's one thing to be able to sing well, but another to be an artist and find your own voice within music. And that's what the goal was for me in my teenage years. I had to find myself.
I think people often tend to listen to music with their eyes and not their ears, and I just wanted my work to shine, and to be able to convey my message without imagery taking away from that.
Through the music, you can pretty much tell what I've been through and what I've accepted. And releasing it has made me realize I'm not alone in it, because of the reactions I've been getting.
I wanted it to be about the music, so maintaining that is kind of difficult. But it's something I found made the most sense because it's about the music at the end of the day. That's what I'm most passionate about.
It's a great thing to hear people putting me up to this standard and putting me on this pedestal and expecting greatness from me, but at the end of the day, I'm just trying to be a better me as an artist musically.
One of the first CDs I ever bought was Alicia Keys's 'MTV Unplugged' album. That album is the one I would take home and listen to on my Walkman, in my room, before I had an iPod. I learned most of the songs on piano.
People always make me uncomfortable when they ask me: 'Who's this song about?' I feel like I let you read my diary and now we have to have a conversation about it! I already let you read it, let's just leave it at that.
The fact that I can travel around the world doing what I love is such a blessing. I've learned that traveling is such an important thing; there's so many beautiful things out there and we get worried about such little things.
As a black woman, I've always had to work hard to earn my respect as a musician - and as a young woman, too. As a writer, in certain sessions or certain rooms people think, 'Who's kid is this? Who's this little girl?' I've had to prove myself.
I'm huge on the dynamic of my show and the experience, not just performing songs. It's important to me to make sure that people experience every song, and feel like I'm singing directly to them. Your eyes never want to leave the stage because there's always something happening.
I think most women, we have intuition. We always know what we always want to find out. We always want to be wrong, and we hate when we're right at the end of the day. People say we love to be right. That's not true. We don't like to be right, because usually we know when it's the truth.
When I was a little bitty kid, I was listening to the stuff my parents were listening to. My mom was a huge Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige fan. My dad had a cover band that I sang with, and he loved Parliament, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, the blues, James Brown.
I don't know if I have a favorite part of being an artist. I do love being onstage and performing with my band. I also love rehearsing with them and creating the show, that's always a fun part. But there's also nothing like being in the studio and being able to get back to myself and get back to my feelings.
I guess 16, 17, 18, that whole period was a dark time for me. I guess it was a hormonal thing, going through all those changes as a young woman, learning who you are and being comfortable with yourself, and also, which goes along with that, boys. It was definitely an unhappy, 'Who am I?' period. 'Who am I gonna be?'
People do things on Instagram and put on a front and try to live a life that they may not really want to live, or don't truly believe in. And that's the life that they portray. That's not the real them. We all have to be more aware of what is that's really happening inside. Are we really standing for what we believe in?
As a young woman, I experienced high school and heartbreak, and the music I started to write was a little bit more poetic, and more inspired by spoken word. The real raw emotional things that sit in the back of our minds, that you were afraid to say? That's how I started to write my music. And that's how 'H.E.R. Volume One' came about.