I have that working-class show-business blood coursing through my veins.
I love kids, but there's always time for them later. You can always adopt; you can have a puppy. The songs are my children.
I think regardless of where people are from, country music is a through line.
I think I have a hard time expressing myself in my relationships. I use songs to tell people how I'm feeling. If I can't say 'I love you,' I'll write a song about it and hope that the person figures it out.
I think you kind of lose the human aspect when you make things too perfect.
When I'm sick of myself, and when I don't know what to say as a solo artist, I can write a song for a movie. When I don't know where to turn musically, being in a band - Rilo Kiley or Jenny & Johnny - the collaborative nature is really exciting.
It really helps me to get into the character of the record when I have a designated look. It just really simplifies things for me.
Sometimes you don't understand what you're going through until you're on the other side of it.
I'm a pretty terrible rapper. I always have been.
I think the idea of opening up for a massive band is always better than actually doing it, and having your name on the ticket means more than the actual set.
I would never say anything's over forever. How could you possibly know how you feel? How could you shut the door on anything?
I find most modern country virtually unlistenable. I can't relate to the music or the lyrics.
I felt like onstage I have to have a certain amount of anonymity, like, personal anonymity, to feel loose and free. When you're up there with people who've known you for a decade, and you make a bad joke and you hear the cackling behind the drums, it's hard to get lost in the moment.
Rilo Kiley was a rock band, so I wanted my solo records to feel different.
I can't imagine how people will react to my music. For me, it's a really fluid process from one record to the next, but it's really up to the listener.
I learn lessons with every interview I give.
I never intended to set out and be a singer-songwriter. I just sort of became one because I put out my own record.
I felt like hip-hop was my music, it was like my outsider music... but then my mom started answering our phone, 'Yo, what's up.' She was hearing me talk to my friends. I was like, 'No, mom, don't cop the hip-hop talk.'
Rock n' roll is a pretty fun job.
My hair looks so good out in the desert, it's unbelievable. It's, like, perfectly not frizzy.
I'm always pretty nervous when I do anything! I walk very slowly. I'm very careful.
I'm an American songwriter, and I write from a very American perspective, and so did the records I grew up listening to.
When you're talking about your own music every day, listening to bands, going to festivals, you can kind of lose sight of your initial connection with music. Instrumental music - especially jazz - helps me refocus.
I don't feel unlucky in love anymore, and it's not all emo. It's a scary place to be in when you're like: 'What am I supposed to write about now? I don't feel heartbroken, so now what?'
I'm a late bloomer. It's taken me a long time to find my voice, and I think all the records I've made over the years, I was finding my voice, and that's part of the process.
I write music, really, to make myself feel better.
I'm typically not a heels person.
I'm not trying to repeat myself or cater myself to one specific group of people.
As hard as I try to sound tough and dark, I still sound cute.
When I first started touring, we had a crappy van, and we would all share rooms. So for many years as a grown adult woman, I would share a bed with a bandmate, whether it would be Jimmy Tamborello from the Postal Service or Pierre De Reeder from Rilo Kiley, just a pillow barrier between us sleeping on the same bed.
My true social media passion is making creepy short movies on Instagram.
I am in a constant cycle of selling my clothes at Wasteland and buying from Goodwill. Once or twice a year, I go through my closet and donate everything to Goodwill. It feels like I am recycling my fashion.
I grew up on Loretta Lynn and Dusty Springfield. I remember lying about it; it wasn't cool to listen to country when I was 12.
Some shows suck, but I always - the show must go on. I learned it from my past as a child actor. The show must go on. You have to just keep on with it.
That is the true joy of being a solo artist. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. I can show up with my guitar and my song, and it can sound a hundred different ways. That's the freedom of being on your own. The flipside is: That's you on the cover. If it sucks, it's your fault.
You can find me at three in the morning in my living room with a glass of wine and really bad '90s trip hop beats blaring from my headphones.
Sometimes things feel hopeless. Not always within my own life - but looking outward, it seems like rough times lie ahead of us. The world seems to be kind of caving in on itself in a lot of ways. But I try to look on the bright side.
The Rilo Kiley song 'A Better Son/Daughter' is my most requested song - especially for people who are at the age I was when I wrote it. It's sort of a mid-twenties lament.
When I'm not working is when I tend to freak out a bit. It's hard for me to just stay home.
I've always tried to get around writing love songs, I guess because I've always had a hard time saying, 'I love you.'
You wouldn't want to be in a rock band - trust me.
Songs are really interesting in that way. Sometimes, they grow with you. Sometimes, you outgrow them.
When I think people like one record more than the other, then someone will surprise me.
Sometimes people come to my shows and think I'm a Christian artist, and they put their hands up in the air, like they do. But first of all, I'm a Jewish girl from the Valley, and I'm from Los Angeles. It's funny to be misinterpreted.
If you're a songwriter, you have to do homework. You can exist for a while on the inspiration, but at some point, you have to sit down and have the discipline to write - to finish the poem, as they say.
I think it's always an adjustment for me, but I do feel like, ultimately, I can kind of write anywhere. It just takes a second to get back in to the groove.
I am a child of digital generation. I have done most of the records with Rilo Kiley on computers, on Pro Tools or other digital programs.
After Rilo Kiley broke up and a few really intense personal things happened, I completely melted down. It nearly destroyed me. I had such severe insomnia that, at one point, I didn't sleep for five straight nights.
It's pretty amazing to write under any circumstances when someone gives you an assignment to write a song, even if it doesn't get accepted. I've written songs a couple of times, some for Disney, that haven't actually ended up in their films, but then you're left with a song forever.
