Keiko Agena Quotes

If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.

And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular.

If you're performing music that is not who you are or where you're at, it is painful. It's painful for the performer and for the audience.

If I go into a studio and find my truth of the moment, there are a number of people in the world who can relate to what I'm saying and are going to buy into what I'm doing. Not because it's the new thing of the moment, but because it's genuine emotion. Its how I feel. This is how I articulate the world.

Hopefully, by the time I do a project, I already have a true understanding and love of what I'm about to do because if I don't, I'm not going to work on that project. I really want to have those connections so I can be truthful to the emotional aspect of what I have to deliver for the story.

Love stories should be relatable.

I think I started writing because no one had ever told me you can write about the things you know in a musical. They don't have to come from some far off place.

The music that I make is pretty sincere; it's from my heart and I love it, and what just happened is more people have started to connect with my heart, and I haven't followed some kind of marketing scheme.

I've never sung a single song in my whole life on purpose to shock anyone. My 'hot numbers' are all, if you will notice, written about something that is real in the lives of millions of people.

I only record songs that I really like and believe in and can sing with conviction.

I love the fact that people can relate to what I'm saying, even if it's not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

Music's supposed to be real. When it really touches you, it's supposed to be real.

I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.

I try to give each performance my own soul, to bring a truth to my character. Hopefully, when I bring that much truth to a character, it resonates with somebody, and it sparks some kind of emotion in them.

When I listen to a song, I don't say, 'Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.' I'm thinking, 'That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.'

I'd play the same character for ten years if the words and the moments that I'm playing are authentic.

With 'A Northern Light,' I've already heard from teenage readers, teachers, librarians - it's been so gratifying. It's amazing that you can take something that matters so deeply to you and make it matter to someone else.

I think what I'm trying to do is create moments of recognition. To try to detonate some kind of feeling or understanding of lived experience.

I believe honesty comes across in music because for people that music isn't just something to dance to. For people for whom music is something that they feel, they understand what I'm talking about.

I can't just make a song people can dance in a club to... it still has to be real.

I love relatable stories.

Whenever I perform, people get me because I'm talking about things that people can identify with and relate to. I'm not just up there doing jokey, jokey, joke.

What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.

I wanna make stuff that sonically sounds really good. I don't wanna make a song about how people think I'm this when I'm really that. I don't wanna make a song about how I grew up broke.