Mary Gauthier Quotes

All music has to speak in some form or other.

I had no idea I was gonna be a songwriter, because I was too young to know my own evolution. I started playing the violin as a way to express myself because I didn't have a lot of vocabulary when I was 14.

I don't think I'll ever do a record that's just the same song over and over again because I'd like to think about it like it's an album and a snapshot of everything that makes you who you are and where you're at at that time in your life.

I want my music to evolve to become more me.

When I turned 19 I kinda realized that I needed to write my own songs instead of singing songs written by other people.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

These seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words.

It wasn't until Duotones that I felt my true voice come out.

I picked Dad's guitar up when I was 8. It hurt to play, so I put it down and picked it back up when I was 15 and dug in. The guitar helped me come out of my shell and kind of gave me an identity at school.

I've also become much more the musician I've always wanted to be.

I kind of always wanted my own music to just sound like, like me, I suppose, like if I was music it would be the music I make, I think.

Music is a vital part of my life, and it has been since I was a kid. It helped me find my identity as a person, it helped me find my identity as an artist, and it helped me get in touch with emotions that I didn't know I had.

Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

In the beginning, I wrote OK songs, but they didn't have a unique perspective.

I like to make music because I've been making music since I was 7. I can get across the things that I want to say in my music so that I don't have to say anything. I don't have to speak out about the things I believe; I can say them in my music.

The blessing of being able to write music and let music speak for itself is you let the melodies and let the lyrics and the groove talk to people instead of me talking to people.

I was 29 or 30 when I felt sure of what I was doing, but not fully identifying as a songwriter until I was 37.

When I wrote my debut album I was around 17, I didn't really know what my sound was or who I was and what I wanted.

I would never have been able to find my voice if I didn't have music education.

The thing about doing mashups and covers is it's great, but a part of you never gets to really showcase what your original sound is like or what your writing voice is like.

My music is constantly changing because I am. I'm writing it and changing as I'm writing.

As a solo artist, my desire is to express myself through my music.

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

All my songs are where I am.

Music is a lens through which to see who we are. Every phrase of every piece of music is trying to tell a story.