I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, ‚Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we’ll talk.‘

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.

Kitty Wells was the first and only Queen of Country Music, no matter what they call the rest of us. She was a great inspiration to me as well as every other female singer in the country music business. In addition to being a wonderful asset to country music, she was a wonderful woman.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I’ve never been interested in that.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

If I’m gonna write songs about my exes, they can write songs about me. That’s how it works.

Faith Hill is a big role model.

When I heard ‚Jesus, Take the Wheel,‘ I was like, OK. Some people look at it as a song written for an American Idol, Carrie Underwood, who is wonderful. But when you’re a songwriter listening to a song, you hear something else. I heard that song, and wow.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

I’d like to do a completely off-the-wall collaboration. I would like one of my songs to be the hook to a rap song. That would be so much fun!

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.

Cardi B put a lot of work in.

So many girls come up and say to me, ‚I have never listened to country music in my life. I didn’t even know my town had a country-music station. Then I got your record, and now I’m obsessed.‘ That’s the coolest compliment to me.

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.

I just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.

My nails are my rhythm section when I’m writing a song all alone. Some day, I may cut an album, just me and my nails.

Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you’re working with; otherwise, you’re not gonna come out with something that’s really you.

I’ve written all my songs on every single one of my records, and that’s what’s been fun about looking back.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don’t have to be in love with anyone.

In 2013, the week before I dropped ‚Crenshaw,‘ ‚Complex‘ wrote an article that said that Nipsey Hussle is one of the top 25 underperforming artists. I was so offended that I responded with my own opinion about these journalists – their point of view is not validated in our culture.

If I could, I would not do anything else. I’d just be in the studio for my whole life. I would never go to parties, events, and red carpets. I would rather just be in the studio for the whole time. I don’t even care. Nobody has to know what I look like. I just want to make music.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

In my view, the only thing worse than a rock star is a rock star with a conscience.

In my songs, I’m not saying something that’s never been said before. The have lyrics aren’t going to blow people away. It’s the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.

In hip-hop, there’s not a lot of love. There’s not a lot of love being spread. It’s always like ‚I’m stuntin‘ on you raps, or I’m better than you raps.‘ It’s not a lot of ‚Yo man, I idolize you raps.‘

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

Pop music will never be low brow.

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

Stylistically, I love make-up. I love doing my own make-up and stuff, but clothes-wise, I actually didn’t ever really care. Initially the fashion world was more interested in me than the music world, which was strange when I first started singing.

Over the years I’ve met quite a few big rappers. Then it exploded with 50 Cent, and I did a book with him. It’s always a strange meeting of two worlds, it’s very exciting.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.