Kim Petras Quotes

When I was playing bluegrass, I was living down in West Hollywood - starving.

I never really made a full album in Los Angeles before.

I can live in L.A. as a struggling artist. I cannot live in New York as a struggling artist.

Before I had a record deal, I was living in New York and playing anywhere I could, from somebody's house to an open mic to coffeeshops.

I moved to Nashville at 17 to make music, and since then I've put everything I have into doing it right.

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.'

I started as a guitarist and couldn't find a decent singer, so I started providing my own vocals.

I remember when I made my first album, I was 32 or 33 years old and I thought I was way too old then.

I keep reminding myself I'm the same guy who was lucky enough to get my break because Roger Daltrey commissioned me to write the songs for one of his earlier albums.

I've been doing music for the longest time.

I want to position myself as a great singer/songwriter in Korea, then jump off that into different markets. South-east Asia, China, Japan - I've done nothing even though I speak four languages - English, Korean, Spanish, and a little bit of Mandarin.

I started writing music around 20 years old.

The jingles saved my life. When I got hired to do that, I was on top. I finally was making a living doing what I loved. Before that, it was so bleak; it got so dark in L.A. I was 25, been living there for seven years trying to make it, and getting really close to getting signed with different bands and as a solo artist only to have my hopes dashed.

Last year I was 16, it was my first round of releasing music. Since then I've been working more on having an identity as an artist and really figuring out what it is that I want to talk about and how I want to sound.

I've been trying to be a singer ever since I was 2 years old and I'm a whole 27 years old now so it's like, things can happen or they can't. It's a humbling experience every year, every day.

Right after high school... the first time I ever recorded music was with a rapper, a friend of mine, and I would just be like, 'I'll sing your choruses.' So I would sing his hooks and he would go in there and rap.

I wrote a whole solo album and recorded some of it, even did a little tour with Sara Lee and Gail Ann Dorsey.

I've wanted to do a solo album since 2000 when I was writing songs for the 'Machine' record.

When you first start out, people think this is super easy and you find your crew super quick. But you've really got to go through songwriter boot camp to find your people.

Before 2 Chainz got big, he used to sleep on my couch.

I want to literally quit drag and go live in the woods somewhere and write music for my favorite female singers, like Miley Cyrus or Kacey Musgraves. I would love to be able to write music for them and hear these women I admire sing my songs. That would be like doing drag without having to get into drag myself.

When you're not successful as a musician, you are oftentimes unemployed.

When we got with Dallas Austin, he was just getting on. He was kinda like the fourth member of TLC.

I write all the time, and I write a lot of songs, but before I started putting out records, those songs always just ended up on stuff that I did with The Babies.

As a working musician, your first instinct is to try and do your job. It wasn't always my aspiration to sing; I just wanted to be a great working musician. But then Flying Lotus suggested I try, and nothing has ever been the same since.