Melanie Martinez Quotes

Everyone has their own journey, and for me, going from singing background to writing songs has truly opened doors for me and has also helped me find myself as an artist in terms of what I want to say and the style of music I want to have.

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

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a rock star, not an actor. It means I can do what I want on my own terms.

If I had to drop everything and just be a songwriter, I would be OK with that because that's the real joy.

I realized that there was much more to my voice than I'd ever been led to explore and that I could make my own songs.

Ever since Two Daughters I've been composing my own music.

I never imagined I'd be a solo artist. And now I couldn't imagine being part of a group.

I have been blessed with some incredible compositions to record and perform and all of my songs have had the ability to grow as I and those who have supported this career of mine for these 50 years have.

I felt like by doing 'Turned Up,' it was something for my fans. It would be a great outlet for me to come out musically and really step up my game.

I was a cover artist for years. I didn't start writing songs until I was in my mid-twenties. I wrote them with John Leventhal, and they were pretty bad. I was in my late twenties when I wrote the first song with him that made any sense to me about what I was rooted in and what spoke for me as an artist. That was 'Diamond in the Rough.'

My aspirations were never anything other than I really, really admired certain singers over the years, and I just wanted to do the best I could. And that has been kind of like the way I've been fortunate enough to be able to have a career, have some success, and yet continue to learn my craft.

I'll make music as long as I can sing and stand up and hold a guitar and I feel like doing this.

I didn't start singing and writing songs properly until I was 19.

As long as I can make albums, I will.

I'm trying to break away from doing covers or from being considered only as a YouTube star. I'm a singer, songwriter, sound engineer, and producer.

I didn't really want anyone to know that I wanted to write music or make songs because, in a way, I didn't necessarily know if I wanted to do it for a profession. I wanted to do it to express myself.

I don't see my singing for films as a transition from singing my own songs because I see it as part of the same picture.

I was 19 when I wrote 'Dreams,' and that would have been when it started to happen. The band got signed, and I was probably beginning to see different things besides my small town of Ballybricken.

The fact is, for the first 10 years I toured as a solo artist, I wasn't playing any of the songs I didn't write or sing.

We started the band when I was about 19 or 20. At that age, it would have been kind of hard to imagine a lot of the stuff that I've written. We were playing garage rock. I wanted to dash out three chords and scream. But if you do that for 20 years, what's the point?

A lot of people start by learning other people's songs, but the idea of singing someone else's music didn't excite me. I just wanted to write my own. It was really bad to begin with. It's improved slightly since.

I started off playing my own songs, just because I saw it as a means to an end almost of, 'Right, if you want to play gigs, you have to write your own songs.' I mean, they were absolutely terrible.

I think about Dischord. There's been a pretty consistent notion that Dischord have been some sort of "overlords" of the scene. Some people have felt 'they are too cool for us,' or 'they won't put this out,' etc. All we're doing is our own work, our own thing. That's all we've ever done. Our work.

Over the years, I've had fairly benign record companies who gave me a lot of rope, but in spite of that, there's still restrictions and expectations. It's nice to be at the cottage-industry size, which I think is kind of the business model of the age anyway. It's the way to be. The Internet makes a lot of that possible. Having a loyal fan base is also very useful to keep me operating; people can find your website, and the venues that you're playing at, the merchandise you have for sale, all that kind of stuff. It's great to be able to reach the audience in a more direct way.

I think everything happens for a reason and all of my choices have led me up to my solo album and made me stronger, not only as an artist but as a person. I want to do more the Black Eyed Peas albums and more of my own albums. I'm in this for the long run.