Music Ambitions Quotes

I always wanted to be a rock'n'roll star.

I've gotten tons of awards and I believe when it's my time to get a Grammy, I'll get a Grammy.

A top 100 single was never on the cards for me, really, like in my own head.

And I just pray that god gives me longevity in the music industry.

I didn't move to Nashville with any inkling or dreams of getting a record deal. I didn't have those stars in my eyes. I just wanted to take a break, relax, and figure out songwriting.

Every band wants to play in every city. We all do.

Something happened in the nineties. There was a shift. I don't want to blame it on grunge or the rise of indie - but that was basically it. It was seen as dirty and kind of ignorant to have these ambitions, to want to be a big band.

Telling people that I wanted to make dance music, or be on the radio, they looked at me like I was crazy because there was nothing like that in Lichtenstein when I was getting started. That's why I went to Germany, because there is industry there.

My goal is to get my music out to as many people as possible. That a song of mine is being played on the radio so far away from home really, really pushes me. It's everything I've dreamed of.

After about a year or so, I was in L.A.; I'd decided to try to get a band together out there.

I have gotten more than I asked for. All that I ever wanted was to hear my voice on record and have a song among the Top 20.

I was just another long-haired teenage kid with visions of grandeur, strumming a tennis racket or a broom in front of his bedroom mirror.

I used to daydream in class about what it'd be like to be a singer. It's what I wanted to be ever since I was little, but I never knew if it'd happen or not. I was just a normal girl who was doing all the things teenagers do, but on the side, I was attending music camps and going to songwriting sessions.

I was just glad to meet somebody outside of my group of small town friends who was into music. Somebody else who had aspirations to do something more than sing at a record hop.

I wanted my own rock band and stuff like that, but things didn't work out. I didn't have the patience to write my own songs and learn it and everything.

I went to college in Iowa for a little bit and tried to get some bands together there. That was about a year of my life.

I used to lie in bed and imagine I was performing at the Albert Hall, not that I'd ever been there. I took lessons with a German teacher when I was quite young. But it turned out I had a very high soprano voice, which I didn't like at all.

I was still on track to go UNC at Chapel Hill, I had no plans to be a musician. It wasn't even a goal of mine. Then I had this song that blew up and went viral and suddenly I found myself playing shows and having this music career.

I think, back in the day, when I was first starting to make music, all I wanted to do was to get a record deal.

I'm going to keep pursuing my dream, keep singing and, hopefully, move to L.A.

I'm just this kid from Toronto who got his start.

All these interviews I'm doing - this is the kind of stuff that I was dreaming about doing when I was younger. I was praying for people to want to write about me. I wanted people to hear my music. I wanted to perform. I wanted to be on billboards.

I grew up in Nashville, born and raised. I'm a country girl, and I love country music. I had a dream I was going to be the first black female country music star, but then that wasn't the case.

Everybody always thinks you have to move out of the city and go where the music industry is, but it's possible in Louisville, and it's possible anywhere. You just have to believe.

When I first started out, they were like, 'Is there anybody that you like that you want to work with, and we'll see what we can do?' And I went, 'I like Malay,' who's Frank Ocean's producer, and they were like, 'Not going to happen.' It did seem so, like, high-in-the-sky sort of thing, do you know what I mean? It still does, that it happened.