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When I was a teeny little girl, I was in dancing school, and I sang.

When I was 3 or 4, I seemed to be bursting with music. They played Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra in the house, so I learned my vocabulary from song lyrics - I was literally singing before I was talking.

I think I knew I was going to be a musician for the rest of my life kind of early. When I was in third grade, I was playing in a talent show, and my dad wrote a two- or three-minute boogie-woogie piece. I played it, everybody loved it, and I was like, 'Wow, this is great.'

When I was younger, acting, singing, and dancing was what it was all about.

I wanted to be a cheerleader, like my sister was - all the most popular and beautiful girls are cheerleaders and I wanted that, and it demolished this vision of myself. That's when I found the piano, when music saved me; that's when I first attempted to write my own songs.

I did dancing and singing when I was little, and then when I was 12 years old my friends were taking speech and drama at school. They were private lessons, and I started doing that. Over the years everyone else dropped out and I just kept going. I loved it.

I was crazy for music as a high school kid and a college kid.

I went to a concert once when I was a little kid and ran up onstage, started dancing, started saying anything that came to my head. I was like a little vaudevillian.

I remember Alicia Keys and Usher had released a song called 'My Boo,' and my music teacher got me to sing a duet with a friend of mine, and I remember being so nervous because I loved to sing, but I could never fathom singing by myself. And when I did that, I remember how proud I was of myself. I was 12.