I only performed a song so I could not write an essay. I just enjoyed being around bands, and around musicians, and, I didn't want to be the girl who followed the band around. I love singing, I love performing, but it's never been this goal.

I was probably 16.I played - I tried to play these songs that I had written. And, this was a common theme when I was younger: I would write a song about somebody, and they would come to my show. I wouldn't be able to play the whole thing, because, there would be some giant, loaded secret coming up in like, the third verse, or something.

I had a really bad blushing problem when I was younger. The first time I ever performed was in an English class. I had an essay that I was supposed to write, and, instead of writing an essay, I wrote a song. So, I was playing this song in class, and I literally turned the color of this sweater that I was wearing, completely red. I think it was that feeling of challenging everything in me, my introverted personality. Like, "This is what you have to do. It doesn't matter if you do it wrong, you just have to do it."

I had an indie pop phase, I had just about every phase you could think of.

Anyway, this huge Lena Dunham interview in Playboy. It felt like a shifting, of some kind. This new female archetype - this new, powerful, honest, non-pandering kind of female is becoming more powerful than whatever else has been rocking it for the past 10 years. I heard that Hugh Hefner's daughter is taking over. Which, if a woman is running Playboy, something is right.

I went to England because somebody told me to, and I loved it. And, "blessed" is a silly word to use for some people, but that's how I feel. I feel blessed.

I used to say that I was making "country music," because it was the quickest, easiest answer. I'm obviously heavily influenced by country music. There was a three-year stint in my life where I listened to nothing else, so, I learned it very well.