I knew what I didn't want, and I knew whatever it was going to be it had to be believable and it had to come from me and I had to drive it. The way I write is very honest and when I think of the music that I listened to growing up, I loved it because I believed it.

I think I was a mermaid and I used to swim the shores or Hawaii and used to pop up and see coconuts and pineapples everywhere.

The simple questions are always the hardest ones.

I had to introduce a lot of people into my writing environment which I thought at first I would find really difficult, but I actually found that I loved it. It meant that I was meeting different people; it meant that I was expressing myself in different ways.

I just used to love the sound of especially a female vocal like Ella Fitzgerald for example, it's just that empowering self-control that can make a whole room go silent. I fell in love with that sound.

A piano in the house, when I came home from school and was able to play all these different notes with all theses different sounds, I really found that fascinating.

I was teaching myself notes from three and then by seven I'd figured out how to play some chords, and at school I used to love writing poems and poetry, so I guess I kind of put two and two together and that formed my songwriting from an early age.