Yeah I grew up in the public eye. I became a man in the public eye, which is kind of a bizarre thing to come to terms with. Now I'm in my late 20s and I was in my early 20s when I became recognizable. But I think 'Moneyball' represents a very strong shift in my career and becoming an adult and a man.
People say you make your own luck; I don't think that's the case, but maybe you contribute to your luck by recognizing it and taking advantage of it.
I absolutely do not think that I have even a vague recollection of what normal life is like.
My mom and my dad were married 56 years, and the fact that I reconciled with my dad I think made their marriage a little bit better as well.
As both a student of history and a man devoted to living in the present, I admit that I do not spend a lot of time imagining how things might otherwise have been. But I do like to think there is a difference between being resigned to a situation and reconciled to it.
The question of what actually caused the Civil War is secondary to the result of the Civil War, which is that after the war was over, slavery was ended, and the North and the South reconciled. And I think we need to respect that.
I think that one of the things that influences me most as a composer is to what extent I can deconstruct and reconstruct the material that I'm working with.
Even as I think of myself as a 'rememberer,' I also know my memory is probably doing all this work to reconstruct a narrative where I come off better.
I think it's important to remember that music supervision is not just about a fantastic record collection or knowledge of music, although that certainly helps for aspiring music supervisors.
I think I had kind of an advantage. When I was growing up, my dad had just got out of jail and he had a great record collection. He had - it was all - these were the songs. So I heard a lot of these songs, like, my whole life, so for me it was easy. I already knew what I was going to sing.
I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that's rather silly.
Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups.
You have record companies that sign acts that they think are great, and then they never do anything. Acts that they don't think are really going to do much end up having a career. I don't think anyone really knows what it is that drives somebody to get on their computer and want to download a song.
Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you'd think that I'd have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I'm doing. Actually, they've just kind of let me take the wheel.
My record company certainly wants me to play live, badly, but I have no such plans. My only motivation to do such a thing would be money, and I don't think that's a good reason to play live.
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.
If I had been thrown out into a radio tour when I was 18, or 17, and given a record deal, I don't think... it would have been a total nightmare.
Growing up, I never knew that Raffi turned down celebrity endorsements, TV shows, and specials and refused to make merchandise, but it makes sense given how I think about him: My memories are limited to his voice through the record player and the album covers I stared at.
More than half of all the hip hop record sales are white people, and I think that might be a result of my record helping people to accept hip hop.
I used to think that all great recordings happened at about 3 A.M.
