Definitely, it's hard being a young artist and being taken seriously.
I lost my voice. I'd never had to cancel a show before and I had to walk around with a pad and a pen, writing things down.
Barton Fink is just too self-important as an artist to get much sympathy.
When the first record came out, I'd go down to radio stations pretty much every day to get the record played, and I would walk in and they'd tell us how much they loved the record, but they weren't sure how much they could play it because they were already playing a girl.
Even though I'm a pop singer, I really have more the life of a country singer.
All the great artists had their dark sides. Look at Amy Winehouse or anyone who has achieved a certain level of success. Even Adele, and the people that you wouldn't put in the same category as a gangster rapper. These women have exposed their vulnerabilities, demons, and things that have hurt them.
A lot of the most prolific painters died broke and weren't appreciated in their time. I'm trying to remember who exactly I was thinking of - like Rembrandt, van Gogh or Gauguin. Some of those guys, they got whole floors of museums to themselves but weren't really appreciated in their time at all.
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 certainly don't want to be an angry old artist.
I wanted it to be like Amy Grant, but it didn't pan out that way. My label actually went bankrupt, and I was left without a home.
We aren't made to be worshipped as humans. I think that is why we see so many great artists crumble, because as humans, we are made to serve each other.
'Anthem' was the record that almost didn't get made for a completely different reason than 'Underneath.'
You can't be rolling into town with stars in your eyes. A lot of people get to Nashville and immediately start selling themselves: 'Let's go to lunch and talk about the business!' Then you realize everyone is talented here.
When you're a musician, a lot of time people help you out; they take pity on you. Family members will kind of come around and are like, 'Listen, I bought you a bunch of groceries because I know that you're a screwup.'
Sometimes being a musician has little to do with viability and everything to do with survivability. Many musicians start out great, and they wind up out of the business in 10 years.
In reality, my parents knew that I was a vegetable outside of music. They have fears, they know how tough and competitive it is, but they're happy that there are a lot of people backing me.
Yeah, I was in the phase for the last ten years or so where every record I made I said OK, that's the last one, I don't want to record anymore, I don't want to do this any more, I don't want to have a public life.
'Course, 'Santini' bombed in England, y'know. It came out at the height of the New Wave, which couldn't have been a worse time for a solo singer trying to sell rock melodies.
All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.
Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds.
I always have felt that most people don't have the first idea about what musicians, in the traditional sense - I don't mean in the modern media fake way, but traditionally - what they went through, what their lives were like.
I did a CD way back in 1989, but I never got it off the ground.
What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.
When someone is a musician - trying to make a living off being a public figure - it's really easy for people to see me as a face on a screen that doesn't have a personal life.
It's very hard to tour.
