Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The first songs I made brought me to the Grammys. I was a five-times nominated teenager off voice memos and songs that were clearly recorded off different mics.
I feel like we go through different stages of love. When you get a little bit older, love starts to feel different, but you see that love has always been there.
A lot of people feel pressured by the outside influences, whether it's your job, whether it's school. But who says you can't take care of that stuff and still be young?
I want people to know that it's OK to have feelings; it's OK to be vulnerable. That no matter where they live around the world, teenagers all go through the same things.
I worked hard on making a body of work that takes people on a journey. It was never about making a certain type of song. It was simply about embracing real-life situations.
I got joked on. You had people saying I was stupid, that I was lame, that I was feminine, this and that. I was like, 'OK, but I'm still gonna be successful, and you're not.'
I want to venture out into music education for kids. As a child, I was discouraged by a lack of money, and now I want to use my platform to give back to kids without resources.
My mom is my biggest inspiration by far. She inspires me on a daily basis. I remember hearing her sing around the house, and I was like, 'Mom, you belong on TV. You're a superstar.'
Even though I was super personal with 'American Teen,' I want to tap in and not just tell my own stories but tell the stories of other people - so that I can help as many people as possible.
It's my job to accept my youth, to spread my story, to let people know who I am as an individual, because there's so many people who are blinded and think less of me because of my skin color.
I can't play an instrument to save my life. But when I'm creating, and when I'm making music, I feel like I'm the head of the orchestra, and I'm just waving my wand, and something is created.
I started writing out all of my feelings, and people asked me, 'Have you ever thought of recording your music?' It was something I'd always thought of, but I'd never really had the confidence.
I gotta spread all this love that I have for myself, I gotta spread it to everybody else, because my positivity is going to change at least one person's day a day, and that's all that matters to me.
I had originally planned to do musical theatre and be on Broadway, but then my love for poetry also set in. Once that happened, I became torn between a career as an English teacher or a music teacher.
We forget that when you grow up, there are a lot of people who are in the same position as you. The reason we forget is because there's not really a true voice that talks from the perspective of youth.
I moved from New York to El Paso in 2015, just before my senior year. I was super nervous. My mom, she's in the Army, and she got stationed at Fort Bliss. We packed everything up and drove all the way to El Paso.
I'm a regular guy, and I don't want anyone to look at me as being superior or having a God complex or anything like that, you know? I don't want to walk around like I know everything, because I have so much more room to improve.
It's crazy that people are looking to me as a symbol like, 'Oh, he's the voice of the youth. He's this and this and that.' I feel like there's a lot of pressure that comes with it, when people look to you as the face of something.
The thing about going back to El Paso, it's overwhelming sometimes. I look at the support that I get and the success that I've had, and I can't walk anywhere without being spotted. My hair might be the biggest crime in this situation.
Being timeless means you can listen to something when you're feeling a certain way, and it still has that same power as it did when you listened to the record for the first time. Timeless is abnormal. It sticks out. It can't be recreated.
There's been a time where I was like, I wanna be a folk singer; no, I wanna sing soul. I want to sing classical music. I want to sing R&B. I want to be on Broadway. I just wanna sing. Whatever comes out of my mouth, that's what I want to do.
A lot of people think teenagers haven't gone through anything in their lives - they're not even 20 years old yet. But a twenty-something can go through the same type of experience or heartbreak that a 50-year-old can go through, so why does age matter?
When I started writing, I said, 'I don't know how to do this. I don't know if it sounds good.' Coming from being an underdog or being told that something wasn't for you over and over repeatedly, it took a lot out of me. It took a lot of my self-confidence.
Falling in love in high school and falling out of love - it's very digital. I've had breakups where they've called me to tell me we were done, and I've gotten a lot of text messages from an old girlfriend letting me know how she felt about me after we had ended everything.
My mind was so geared towards being a performing artist, singing all these classical pieces, but the sense of loneliness I got when I moved from New York to El Paso meant that writing turned into singing. I'd sing all these songs, and they'd make me feel better. Songs that crafted the way my life was going to go.
I was in the sixth grade and living in Germany, when I was hanging out late with some friends. I turned around, and there's a dude dressed up as Michael Myers following us all the way home. It was the scariest thing ever, and it always reminds me of Halloween. In my mind, I was so young, so I really thought it was Mike Myers following me home.
