Quote

Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.

I wondered how people would take me being a country music singer. I thought about deviating from that and singing other things. But... it doesn't really make sense for me to try to be something that I'm not.

Every time I tried writing my own songs, they would come out very country. I couldn't fight it, and the more I listened to country music, the more I loved it, and it just became very natural.

As a songwriter, I'm not necessarily writing about myself or my life.

I don't like the idea of a singer-songwriter record. I don't picture myself that way, and it's not my favorite sort of look, I guess. It's really just an aesthetic thing.

Undeniably, I'm a country singer; I'm a country songwriter. But I feel like I make country music for people who like country music and for people who don't.

It is setting goals and trying to be a business person, but at the same time not losing sight of who you are writing songs for and what your goals are as a songwriter. So believe me, if you think I've got it down I don't it is a constant struggle.

You have the ability to write melodies and to put lyrics that mean something: to speak about life and what people are going through in their every day ups and downs, the good times and the bad times. Country music has always talked about life, I think; that's what I've always loved about it.