NELLY FURTADO

Hip-hop was super-exotic to us in Canada.

I remember attaching a wire clothing hanger to the antenna of my radio in my bedroom, so I could get the frequency and get that station and listen to the top 10 every night.

I like my body so much more now since having my baby.

I'm 27. I feel like I get it. I'm OK with being sexy if I feel like it. Some days I'm brainy, some days I'm funny, some days I'm sexy, and sometimes, I just want to dance.

Girls like to see girls dressed up like princesses occasionally.

It's just kind of empowering when you become a mother. You just get overwhelmed with this new confidence and you feel really in control of your life. It's been beautiful.

I remember really bonding with the first generation kids, the Chinese Canadian kids, and in high school bonding with the Latin kids and the East Indian kids. It was very interesting because it made me open to lots of musical sounds.

I'm channelling my 14-year-old self. She's thinking about putting on her big hoop earrings and baggy pants and going to the mall downtown.

Having the balance of a work life and a family life has been so good for me.

I'm privileged that I'm an artist.

If you wait this long to put an album out, you'd better be sure you tried your best.

Guys don't really care, they just want to get the clothes off.

I say it's a girls' world.

Because of my Portuguese heritage, I have an interest in all of the instrumentation that comes from Portugal and Brazil as well.

We may look great on Instagram, but we're still lonely and depressed and anxiety-ridden. I hope, for the sake of our future generations, that our moral compass stays intact.

You can have the best of intentions and think you're doing the right thing but you fall down when you're going against your own instinct.

I am impressed when music matters, when genres are broken, when spirits are lifted, when people make a difference, and when people are true to themselves.

Girls like to see girls dressed up like princesses occasionally. Guys don”t really care, they just want to get the clothes off.

Any time you turn off and let someone else make any artistic decision for you, you make a mistake.

Music is one of the only inanimate things we have left. It can still be mystical, magical and awe-inspiring

I'd love to try and teach Donald Trump how to write a song. I'd love to put him in a room with another person - someone who's protesting him at the Women's March. I'd put the three of us in a room and all write a song together. If that can happen, it proves we can get over our differences.

Art and life go together. I have to have a life filled with experiences to make art, and I have to have art around me to live well.

I think when you mature, you realize that you really don't have to do anything you don't want to do or be represented in a way that doesn't suit you.

It was summertime and I was in The Azores, hanging around the small village my parents are from. I was looking out on this very rural setting, on a road going up a hill. There was an old man coming down the hill with a pitchfork on his shoulder. He was wearing gum boots, work pants - and a Coca-Cola T-shirt. I saw that and thought, That's my album!

I do feel like I'm a survivor because the music industry is still a boys' club. I really respect all the women in the business. I know trusting yourself is hard work but it helps you avoid all the traps and labels that come with being in this business.