Obviously, I like things that are cute and aggressive at the same time, but I didn't want it to just be mini-bangs and lip-syncing in a dress. I need to get away from that stuff.

If you look at the way people behave at shows, icons are now musicians; they are the people that we worship.

One thing with Montreal is it's so cold and everyone's so poor and beer's so cheap: if you go to a show you have to brave the weather to get there. So you show up and everyone's soaking wet - there's a sense of 'I trekked through three feet of snow to get here!' I think there's a kind of camaraderie that arises out of that, that's important to me as well.

It's kind of like I'm Phil Spector and I'm forcing a young girl to make pop music and perform exhaustively. Except, instead of it being someone else, that girl is also me.

I think you can hear, when you listen to someone's music, whether or not they're enjoying making it - it's so great to hear music where you can tell the person making it was just having a blast. That's really important to me as far as my process goes. That's probably why my music ends up being so poppy!

I have a really weird relationship with myself where I'll say, "Do it, do it!" and then, "I don't want to do it anymore, I hate photo shoots, I'm so tired of this!" Or, "I wrote a song, and you're gonna sing it!" then, "I can't hit the note." I want to be a behind-the-scenes producer. I really hate being in front of people. But I'm also obsessed with becoming a pop star.

I know texture is really important, but I think texture and stuff precedes songwriting a lot of the time these days.