I've managed to keep my career going in a way that suits me. I'll perform, and then I'll go home to my actual life, and I've never been so visible.

I spent a lot of my life schlepping around New York with people not doing things for me.

I've learned to have a sense of humor about myself. Lord knows everyone else does!

I wouldn't say I was bullied per se, but I did get a lot of unwanted attention because I was musical and stood out. In school you don't want to stand out; you want to blend in.

I've been, I think, able to stay grounded in such a crazy business, and I attribute that a lot to my family, and especially to my mother. Because, you know, she just was always there to kind of remind me of what priorities should be. O.K., yes, I'm an artist, I'm a performer, but I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, I'm a granddaughter, I'm an aunt. Those things have to be as important, if not more important, than my career.

One of my favorite songs from the album is a song called 'For Better or Worse,' and it's basically about unconditional love, which is, I'd say, an ongoing theme in my personal life.

I don't know if people feel this way, but I think by nature that when you start off as a young pop singer, they assume that you're a bit pampered, prissy, and precious, or that you live in a bubble and not in the real world. For me that's not the case.