Of course the Disney movies, you know all the soundtracks, and anything Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire were doing - Singing in the Rain was one of my favorite musicals I used to watch a lot because my mom came from a theatre background.

Basically, my senior year of high school, I was going to look at prospective colleges and I went to visit Northeastern University because one of my friends was going.

It was like I couldn't even begin to tell my mom I was singing. I didn't want anyone to think that she was trying to get me to sing. I wanted to prove to myself I could do it on my own. I really wanted to do a completely different thing.

This world is going in all sorts of directions, but I think all you can do is get people to think about things in a different way, because sometimes people aren't even thinking.

We [in my family] don't like to mess around and talk about our problems or complain, it's just not anything that we do.

I had been with a guy for seven years and I was done with that. I wanted to reinvent my whole life and change my hair - I'd had brown, straight extensions forever - and I just wanted to get rid of that, to shed skin, and really just be independent.

The main thing I like to do is have a mix of the '70s glamour and emulate a lot of ladies I love, like, Diana Ross, Chaka Khan, Donna Summers. I remember thinking that as a young girl, they were so cool and iconic. I missed that!