I definitely have worked trying to create music that inspires girls to feel confident and strong, and feel like they can do anything.

I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way.

I was always hard on myself for taking things too personally.

A lot of people relate my success now with The Voice, and it has nothing to do with that. I've definitely worked my ass off for a year afterwards trying to get that off of my forehead. If anything, it's actually harder to get labels to look at you when you come off a show like that, and it's harder for people to look at you like a real artist.

I obviously have a different connection to each song in a different way, and they all mean something different to me.

I'm not used to writing about happy emotions, I'm just used to pulling from my sad or angry - happy emotions are very hard for me to portray in music.

I like pop music because it can really affect a large amount of people and if I tell stories and spread messages that I think are really important for people to be aware of, I would want it to be on the biggest platform and I feel like pop is that. I use it as a way to tell stories.