As you get older, challenges arise that you aren't prepared for, but what got me through it was music.

I am kind of majoring in bull shitting.

I am very busy and don't have a lot of down time, but I write my best songs in those situations. I enjoy my life the most when I have a bunch of things going on at the same time.

Music is such a healing thing, no matter who you are.

My second album was written while I was on the road promoting the first record. I tried to take my personal experiences and elevate them to universal experiences, so that I wasn't writing songs about living on a tour bus or being on a TV set for the first time.

My biggest advice for girls - and this is something that I wish I could have known when I was younger - is to have thick skin. It's something that you definitely develop when you get older, but when I first started, I was so obsessed with pleasing everybody. I wanted everybody to like me and to like my songs.

More than anything I want to get up there and hang out with the audience, make everybody feel like it's fun and they're involved and are just, like, friends hanging out in somebody's living room. I went to see Carole King on her 'Living Room' Tour, and that's the kind of feeling I'm aiming for.