Mainstream Expectations Quotes

I'm not interested in doing something edgy with a capital E just so everyone knows, 'Oh, OK, now he's showing us he can do edgy.'

I don't want to sell my soul to Hollywood - to just make run-of-the-mill stuff.

I like to think that I'm a populist entertainer, but I'm a little bit idiosyncratic, and sometimes the networks wouldn't really roll with that.

Probably the biggest bring-down in my life was being in a pop group and finding out just how much it was like everything it was supposed to be against.

I've had offers to sign a record deal, but the people I've talked to have wanted to package me and have me meet with songwriters who've written stuff for Whitney Houston, that sort of thing. That's not at all my style.

Sometimes, you just have to realize, I'm not doing stuff that is really mainstream stuff, and to try and put it out in a mainstream way is almost psychotic.

People refuse to believe that I've never been to Starbucks or Disneyland.

I think I have to expand my creativity a bit, because it's difficult for critics to be, "Oh, this person writes their own lyrics and sometimes writes their own beats and sometimes makes her own videos." They funnel me through, "Oh, is it as good as blah-blah's record, which has had 50 million writers on it?"

We're not on a desperate mission to write chart compatible stuff.

I don't view the fans in the way that most performers do. As a mass of people who have paid money, I know what they want. It's a very, very, very, very, very low common denominator.

No, there is no 'need' for me to do a social cinema.

I've always tried to twist the ideas of beauty that are maybe considered to be ugly by the mainstream. I was already kind of toying with that when it comes to baldness, which came from a discussion with my mother about how to be considered a beautiful woman if you're bald.

People had an idea of what R&B artists or pop artists usually say, which was like, 'Talk about sex, talk about partying, and be positive; don't be too much of a downer.'