When you say ‘control freak’ and ‘OCD’ and ‘organized,’ that suggests someone who’s cold in nature, and I’m just not. Like, I’m really open when it comes to letting people in. But I just like my house to be neat, and I don’t like to make big messes that would hurt people.
When I’m in management meetings when we’re deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I’m the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That’s the part of my life where I feel most in control.
When I’m getting to know someone, I look for someone who has passions that I respect, like his career. Someone who loves what he does is really attractive.
When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.
When I look at acting careers that I really admire, I see that it’s been a precise decision-making process for these people. They make decisions based on what they love, and they do only the things that they are passionate about. They play only characters that they can’t stop thinking about.
When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‘Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.’ I’m thinking, ‘That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.’
When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill.
What makes me happy is just curling up in with my mom in her bed and watching a marathon of ‘CSI’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ episodes with pints of ice cream.
There’s so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it’s reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She’s been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there.
There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.
The only way I hear gossip is if it’s big enough and loud enough for my friends to bring it up to me. Or if it’s, like, a big untrue ordeal from my publicist – and she hates making that phone call!
The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.
The cool thing about reading is that when you read a short story or you read something that takes your mind and expands where your thoughts can go, that’s powerful.
My first memory of loving music happened so early. We would always go to the beach in the summer and I would run from blanket to blanket, from family to family and just sing Lion King songs acapella.
Having room to run and having just the space to use your imagination and create stories out of everyday life, I think that had a lot to do with me wanting write. And write songs.
The words. I love words. I love to write. Being an artist is what I love.
I discover poetry when I was in elementary school and I was so fascinated by it. Because I realised if you get the right amount of syllables and the right amount of words, in the right rhyme scheme and you put it all together. You make words just bounce of a page.
I got to play Kim in Bye Bye Birdie, Sandy in Grease, and Maria in The Sound of Music. And it was so much fun for me, but the thing that I looked forward to the most was at the cast parties. After the shows they had karaoke machines set up and that’s when I could sing country music.
When I was 9 or 10, I used to get all the lead roles because I was the tallest person. But my interest in music soon drew me to country music. I was infatuated with the sound, with the storytelling. I could relate to it. I can’t really tell you why. With me, it was just instinctual.
I could get drunk and run around Nashville naked. But I won’t because I want to set a good example for my fans. I think they deserve to have a role model.