I probably belong to a type of composer of songs who keeps thinking about melody... I am old fashioned.
I wish all teenagers can filter through songs instead of turning to drugs and alcohol.
I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals, and fairs, and karaoke contests, and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.
I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.
I'm not afraid to write my feelings in songs.
There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.
I loved old black and white movies, especially the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. I loved everything about them - the songs, the music, the romance and the spectacle. They were real class and I knew that I wanted to be in that world.
I didn't write those songs, but I can relate to every one of them... I have.
My iPod that was programmed by Peter Buck. It has 7,000 songs hand-picked for me by him.
I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them.
Yoga introduced me to a style of meditation. The only meditation I would have done before would be in the writing of songs.
That sense of failure, I don't know where people put it who don't write songs and aren't able to emote physically. It must go somewhere.
I've just built a studio in my mama's old bedroom, which I thought was fitting; she died last year. We've recorded nine songs recorded in there already; we're sort of just chipping away.
Songs like Reach and S Club Party are pop classics. I'm really proud that I had a part in them.
The spiritual quest was always the predominant aspect of my life. It's always been there. But there's also an incredible passion connected to it; it's not just a dry investigative process. I have been extremely emotional about it, and that comes out in the songs.