It's not like we set out to antagonize the audience in any way. We're just presenting our music; it's really much more innocent.
I thought, 'Maybe if I become a cheerleader, I can meet managers or agents. Maybe I can sing the national anthem at a game, and someone in the industry will hear me.' I saw everything as an opportunity to further my music. I was literally the cheerleader who had a mixtape in between her pom-poms at events.
People who tend to listen to my music have come back and said, 'Yo, this is my anthem. This is what I live by.'
When this genre of music started in America, Metallica was up north in California, we were in Southern California, Anthrax was on the East Coast. We each developed our own metal music, and after 30 years, we're still playing our metal music.
We had the idea as women that we could walk into music and be good at it and be as good as any man and have a career in it without being taken advantage of. So basically, those things came true. The obstacle course was just more difficult than we ever anticipated. We were optimistic and very naive.
Long intros are cool because there's a little bit of anticipation, you know?
Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good.
Is it racist to prefer country music over the blues? Or is it simply a classic case of tribal antipathy toward the unfamiliar, in favor of gravitating to what you know?
My tastes in music tend to favor anything my kids don't like, out of natural antipathy amplified by a sort of malicious glee.
I'm just saying the producers and people who work on music are getting left out - that's when it starts getting criminal. It's like you're working hard, and you're not receiving. In any other business, people would be standing before Congress. They have antitrust laws against this kind of behavior.
An album represents an artist or a band or a group of musicians at any given moment in time. You just produce the music that you feel good about and hope that the audience shows some interest in it.
I firmly believe that we have more latent musical talent in America than there is in any other country. But to dig it out there must be good music throughout the land, a lot of it. Everyone must hear it, and such a process takes time.
I'm not saying you can't be successful in the music industry without Spotify. But when I look at the future of music, I don't think scarcity is the model anymore. We have to embrace ubiquity - that music is everywhere.
One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can't swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it's what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.
At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.
If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don't back down.
I'm enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.
Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it.
I don't understand why the press is so interested in speculating about my appearance, anyway. What does my face have to do with my music or my dancing?
I work with my brother Finneas, and he produces all of my music in his little bedroom in our house. We actually tried renting out a studio for a month when we were producing 'Don't Smile at Me,' but it was really hard there, and we ended up just doing it at home anyway.
