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I just essentially stayed at home for three years and just learned to play as many instruments as I could and listened to as many singers as I could. Like, when I got to about 19/20, I started listening to singers. I normally just listened to bands. Now I listen to a lot of old singers, not a lot of new stuff.

I've been obsessed with seeing life through music. My records, my relationship with records, my relationship with rock stars, everything that surrounds it, has been really one of the only ways that I ever started to understand the world.

I know how it feels to be a singer who wants to get discovered.

I'm kind of insane when it comes to music, a little obsessed.

I just turned 40, and I look at so many performers and so many people who are actually always on time and always have an album out. They don't have actual lives, in my opinion. I feel like I'm so much more than being famous and meeting a musical quota. And I don't know, just the weight of the scrutiny and attention is too weird for me.

It was at Juilliard that I realized that being a singer encompasses so many things that I am interested in. Literature, languages, physics, history, art. You really get to explore so many things.

We've always been fascinated with movie stars and singers, but the fascination with people who really have nothing to offer is something new.

People always want to talk about who I was, but I've always been singing, always been experimenting with pop music.

There are days when I'm completely obsessed with Kate Bush, and there are days when I'm completely obsessed with the Eurythmics. Then it's Aretha Franklin, then it's Lena Horne, then it's Ella Fitzgerald, then it's John Legend, then it's Michael Jackson. Music, to me, is like food, so I feel like whatever I need that day, I can get from a song.

I never really thought I was going to be a singer, honestly. I never listened to singers; I always listened to rap music.