Jillian Hervey Quotes

I find that the quest to be perfect and make perfect music is like a black whole. I realize that you can come with the intention to capture a vibe and use a formula, but you have to accept that most of the time its not going to be what you envisioned and you might manifest something better. I think that's been the hardest thing to wrap my head around that most ideas we go for ends up sounding different. I think art in general should be about enjoying the process and the experience. All that matters is if you feel the music and it captures the element your going for.

Making that statement of 'I'm not afraid to be untamed.' It's just kind of the marriage of those two things.

I think just being a '90s kid - I was not a Backstreet Boys girl, I was definitely into NSYNC.

You're just always growing. I feel like it's been very fast growth, but super exciting and I know I'll look back and feel like 'Yes, things were stressful, but it was also such an exciting time.'

You need to have honest things in the world. Even if people don't understand it, if it's coming from you, that's already important.

Being in New York, and meeting really amazing, talented, eccentric, and bold people, and just feeling really excited about life, got me really revved up and I just felt like everything was at my fingertips - that I could try anything. I really felt invincible. It was such a shift.

We're always working on new music and now that we have our own studio space we have tried to stay focus and really explore. But we have projects out that we are super proud of and want to keep building on that.

I've always been kind of surrounded by music my whole life, so my earliest memories of it were just hearing it in the house.

[New York] gives you room to be weird; you can be yourself and you can wear whatever you want. No one is really going to judge you because everyone is doing their own thing.

I prefer to do things by myself, but I always bring in people who inspire me.

To be on stage, to be sharing a stage with Lauryn Hill, Grace Jones, SZA, Kelis, and all these incredible women, I'm like 'When did this happen?'

Even now, it's so funny how much we do have in common and how much her experiences were similar to mine. But I just wanted to be like 'If I'm going to do it, I'm going to write all of my own music, every lyric, and all this stuff.

We created this journey [in the Begin], sonically, that people can really wrap their heads around and live with and get to know us a little bit more. The dark colors, the light colors, our up-tempos, and our down-dreamy stuff.

I think also, obviously, having someone like Lucas [Goodman], and the people around me are very, not gender-driven or any of that, so when we come in as thing, that's what it is. You can work with us or not work with us and I think that has been helpful. I don't try to put myself in a vulnerable position in that way. I won't just sit quietly.

[Dancing] was just a nice way of expressing myself, listening to music, and being able to move around and be free, but also really learning something. It was just a nice balance of training and expressing yourself at the same time.

As I got older, I started to do it more and more, and I wanted to learn all of the different types. I grew up doing modern, so I wanted to learn ballet, tap, jazz, and African - just everything.

I was working on a piece for one of the things I was dancing to and I needed to have original music. I didn't know where to begin, I'm so bad at computers, and I remembered that he actually made music. I asked Astro Raw if he'd be interested in scoring and he said yes.

Being able to connect with people with similar taste and style also allows people to get to know us better. Although we have been around for a little, some people listen to our music and some people don't listen to our music, so it's nice to be able to curate the sounds and show our influences. Although it's nice to go out and look fancy and dress up, you don't always go to parties where the music is a good so it's nice to be in a position to bring the vibes and create the experience.

I was shaped in college into a performance artist. I never really thought of myself as being one singular thing. I think of myself as an artist and I feel no restrictions when it comes to how I want to portray what I want to portray.

I love the creation process [of music] of it and then sharing it, so I think that was the shift. I never thought I was going to be on a label in general, I was like 'Oh, I wouldn't do that,' and then we ended up on the same label basically.

I grew up as a dancer, and music and dance are so closely tied, that in ballet class you're listening to all this classical music, and in modern class you're working with a live drummer. It was something that always made me feel really comfortable and I've had a connection to since the beginning.

I feel like my dad was the more artistic one, creating his own thing, loving to be around people, and all this stuff, doing exciting things, and my mom was more of the performer.

I'm not looking to be the greatest pop star of all time. I want to be an artist. I want to influence people and I want to get people to think about the world, to think and talk to each other and connect. To challenge one another.

I think having wild, huge hair, is me being my own version of a lioness.

I saw myself traveling with a company or making my own work and being a little weird. I wasn't thinking about the business side of anything, I just knew that I loved dancing.

I'm a Gemini and Lucas Goodman is a Leo, so we definitely wanted some duality. We definitely balance each other out in a lot of ways, but we're also very different.

The freedom I experienced as a dance major in college gave me so much, but the reality of being in school is that you are still forced to work under restrictions.

Architects see the world a certain way, and cooks see and smell the world a certain way. [Dancing ] is always been my lens, what I use to see.

I got to speak to Missy Elliott on the phone and she was like, 'I see you and just keep doing your thing,' and to hear that was incredible.

For the name Lion Babe, we are a little avant-garde, a little left. And with bands like Blondie, Pink Floyd, or Jamiroquai, you don't know they're bands, you just kind of hear the name and you're like 'What is it?' so that was the kind of thing we wanted to do.

[My mom] has a few choice words to calm me down. I think it's beautiful that I sometimes, weirdly, see myself in a photo and I'm like 'Omg, that looks like my mom.' It freaks me out and all that stuff, but it's also just a part of my legacy.

Sometimes words come easily and sometimes they don't. Most songs take me twenty minutes to write.

I'm always looking for people to feel connected to me and inspired in their own right.

The greatest blessing is that, within all of this, I've still been challenged every day to question and show who I am.

I've always been an animal lover my entire life.

I think my life dramatically shifted when I met Lucas [Goodman] and it wasn't even planned. I had a very clear vision of what I was going to do.

Lion Babe, on a work day, is definitely a process. I obviously could do it by myself, but I definitely prefer not to. It's a lot of hair. I used to start with little pieces, and then it just got bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

I tend to write about love because I'm always thinking about it. I think a lot though and struggle with overanalyzing. Way over. That's the thing, I feel like I do that a lot and then finally when I stop thinking, that's when it happens.

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.

We had spent a lot of time in London [with Lucas Goodman], which has been amazing, but also it was kind of a homecoming and we felt so surrounded by a specific community of people who are just so New York, so unapologetically themselves and so creative.

Between my mom and dad, I would hear a lot of Earth, Wind, and Fire. My mom loved Chaka Khan, so that was on in the car a lot.

In music in general, you're always getting a lot of information, buts it's most important to have honest communication. It's always important to understand that we can do so much individually if we connect with one another and have honest conversations. As scary as it is, it can be very liberating. Staying connected to the people you love and staying connected to the things that really matter has been my biggest lesson.

My mom has kind of been more of the emotional support system. One time I was really feeling all out of it, just dealing with a lot of cooks in the kitchen and adjusting to what it means to be in the music industry, and I called her. One of the first things she said to me was 'You have to be thankful that these people even like you, no one liked me, at all, I was not really accepted for a very long time.'

I've always loved vintage and I never like to have something someone else has.

What kind of art do I want to make? What do I stand for? What inspires me? And then to have people in return respond to that... I think that's the greatest thing because throughout dancing, I'm always looking for that.

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!

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.

The people that have inspired me the most were dancers and choreographers.