Michelle Branch Quotes

If after two weeks you still can't write your middle-eight, the best course of action is to see a psychiatrist

The success of Torn was a bit too much for me. I took a year off and was still scared to start the second album.

A few years ago my goal was to try and get the goddamned album made, which put me in a real bad frame of mind.

I didn't have any knowledge of the music industry when I first got to L.A., and I really didn't know on a creative level what I wanted to sound like, so I had to do a lot of experimenting. It led to a spiral of depression and being broke.

Every time I tried writing my own songs, they would come out very country. I couldn't fight it, and the more I listened to country music, the more I loved it, and it just became very natural.

Every time I'm shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don't see the light in the end of the tunnel.

I did the co-writing thing all through the '90s and I got one hit out of it - a Keith Urban song called 'But For The Grace Of God' - but then I got burnt out.

I had basically been shelved by the record label for two years and I was writing songs every day. I made two albums that just never came out, and that was just a really big knock to my confidence, because everything I sent seemed like it just wasn't good enough.

I had a whole bunch of bad country songs, so I put 'em all on an album.

Country music is - can be - a loving industry.

There were some times when I just wanted to quit making music.

I got offered publishing deals to write country music, but it was not what I wanted to do.

Well after 'Fast Car' was so huge, everyone was asking me, 'What's the next song?' At the time I just had ideas I was working on, but it was very clear I needed to finish another song ASAP, and that's how 'Perfect Strangers' came about.

I do not work well when I am in living in a cyclone of panic. I reject actively seeking out destabilization and suffering as a creative model.

Sometimes, musicians worry too much about how beautifully they are playing.

That's part of it: You can't be a country singer-songwriter if you've never had an official heartbreak.

People are always surprised to find this out, but the songs that we write, such as 'Winner of a Losing Game' and things like that, tend to be more country than the other stuff that we cut from outside writers.

A weekly column is not always a treat. It can be a tyranny. There are times when I have very little to say. There are times, every year, when I am weighed down with depression. At these times it takes days of slog to force the words on to the page.

I'd done an EP, and nothing came from that, and I didn't know where to go from there.

You start to compete with yourself when your catalog gets bigger and bigger... I mean, everybody wants the next 'Bless the Broken Road,' but you don't write those every day, so it's difficult.

I want to be a country singer more than anything in the world.

Radio has had my back since 'Missin' You Crazy,' which was a very traditional kind of song.

I don't know how to produce work if it's not something that's deeply scaring me or troubling me.

There is a lot of pressure on pop stars, and I think a lot of it is the pressure that we put on ourselves. In our minds, we build up these huge, huge standards that we think people want from us, and actually, when you break it down, people just want you to make music and perform to the best of your ability, but anxiety can stop you from doing that.

I would say that all the singles that I have put out are collectively just a small piece of the artist that Thomas Rhett wants to be.