Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The experiences that I've had in the music industry have given me a learning curve.
It started off with me being all the way influenced by Atlanta and southern music but I knew my sound had to grow - I started learning melodies.
The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.
You start learning English in fifth grade. I was 12. But even before then I was listening to American music. My neighbor was a really big hip-hop fan, so he taught me everything around hip-hop.
I wanted to emulate music from America - young punks playing rock n' roll is what it was. I read part of Keith Richards' autobiography, and it was totally parallel with me, learning from American records.
A lot of people start by learning other people's songs, but the idea of singing someone else's music didn't excite me. I just wanted to write my own. It was really bad to begin with. It's improved slightly since.
Growing up in Louisiana, my grandmother gave me an accordion because of our Cajun heritage. What ended up happening was I started learning about more instruments, so I just kind of went that route. Music's really all I've ever done.
I have a memory of listening to Tracy Chapman and just being intrigued by her voice. Even as a young girl, I wanted to know more about her and her story. I felt I was learning about her through her music. That was a revelation to me.
I'm so jealous of my friends who came from these super musical households where they were learning piano at three years old. My parents didn't really play loads of music around the house. We had the radio, but they weren't teaching me about music.
I've never been one to learn scales and do exercises. Maybe I'm lazy, but I just don't take to that kind of thing. Learning other people's songs is enjoyable, and my fingers tend to go to new places because I'm not playing my music, the stuff that comes naturally to me.
There are different people who got me into music, but what I liked about Beethoven is that even when I didn't understand it or it was too long, there's still something about it that drove me to it. Then it got me excited about actually learning music, like a theory of it.
A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music's simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It's different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I'm mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.
I actually started singing country music at 4 years old, right when I started learning how to sing. I would cover a lot of Martina McBride, LeAnn Rimes, Trisha Yearwood, that kind of stuff, and it just feels very authentic to me. It's always been there through the years. Even when I was in my band, I still listened to country.