Quotes

I saw Tina Turner do 'Proud Mary' on TV, and it was so electrifying and such a unique experience. I remember crying out of excitement, and I knew that I wanted to be a performer and make people feel excited and moved, and that's why I gravitated towards it.

If I know I will be working with someone and they are not keen with writing with a girl, I like to be non-threatening and cool so they will trust me. It's a thought process of who work and how I want to present myself.

I've always had a teenage thread running through my music.

There are some artists that don't like working with other females, which is fine. They have their own thing. I personally love being surrounded by other females.

I was always super, super musical. So my parents recognized that and put me in choirs, piano lessons, and all that.

I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.

I like to think of myself as the people's pop star a little bit. I respect Lady Gaga so much, and I love what she does, but she has this kind of mysterious, out-of-reach thing. I'm just not that - as much as I'd love to have that sort of mystique, I think I'm kind of an open book.

I've been singing since I could talk, pretty much. My dad was really musical and taught me how to sing harmonies and got me a karaoke machine with tape decks.

I think what it means to be an 'American Girl,' and what I wrote the song about, is our freedoms. The idea that we as Americans can be what we want to be and say what we want to say and that we take it for granted.

When I moved to Seattle in fourth grade, I joined the Seattle Girls' Choir. It's a world-class choir, and we competed, toured Europe, and went and sang at the Vatican, so it was a really awesome experience to have that young.

I had a strange and beautiful afternoon with Steven Tyler where he took me to his house in Laurel Canyon and we took turns playing piano and singing for each other. At one point he sat next to me on the piano bench, pushed his forehead against mine, and instructed me to sing in harmony with him, just on a single note for several minutes. He kept saying, "Do you feel that?!" Meaning the vibrations of our skulls singing together, and I definitely did!

I'm a little more rock and roll than that, I was a teenage drug addict runaway and I came out to Hollywood and made my own way. I have a darker story than some of the other girls and I needed to express that.

"Hold It Against Me" was a happy accident. It was actually inspired by Katy because I was writing with her at the time and I went in the other room where I was working on Britney in between. She came into the room in some tight, sexy little dress and I jokingly said, "Damn, Katy if I told you you had a nice body would you hold it against me?" I was like, "Bingo!" and I wrote that song.

When I started writing with Katy, I was just broke. I didn't have a cell phone or hot water, so I was really down and out. So I really gave it my all and pulled out all the stops, and all my bells and whistles and tricks up my sleeve, for that, because I was hungry and needed it so badly.

I've always been a rock 'n' roll girl at heart. One of my favorite albums and one of my earliest memories is Appetite For Destruction, I love Guns N' Roses - I remember the "Welcome To The Jungle" video and seeing him with the duct tape on his face and tied to a chair and I was like why does this excite me?!