To me, as a musician, there aren't any boundaries genre-wise as far as what can you listen to to inspire you.

I like songs that have like a little bit of quirkiness to them. What I like to do with songs, is kind of throw a little curveball in the lyrics or in the arrangement, to kind of give it a little twist to it.

Black people invented jazz. But this story [in La La Land] wasn't ever claiming to be that. It's just a story about two people from one writer's point of view.

For me, no matter how much money you want to make off of singing, no matter what kind of fame you want to make, achieve, the most important thing to me is making music that you're proud of, making music that comes from you, comes from an authentic place in you.

I only want to be associated with music that is high quality. That's my main criteria.

I don't feel like that many musicians are competitive with each other.

It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live.