Quotes About Authenticity

Once you get everything out of your head about what everybody else is going to think, will radio play it - and I hope they do, I really do - once you shed all of that and just be who you are, that's who I am. That's taken a lot of growing up. I've come into myself musically and as a woman, and I hope to keep growing. If you don't grow, you die.

There was a time, early on in my career, when it was very important for me to be liked by everyone. It meant that I was musically less honest with myself.

I always have to just be myself. Anything else, I'm not happy, and it comes out musically.

Motley never once sat down and said, 'Well, the music scene's changing. We need to make this record a little darker or heavier musically or lyrically.' It was just four guys sitting in a room like a bunch of 16-year-olds in a garage and jamming on riffs.

If you're going to go the way of 'American Idol,' then you better be able to do what you want musically, because just going for the fame will only keep you happy for so long.

I figured out that it was important for me to have my identity, just live independently and like being myself, musically.

I never compromised myself musically.

When I tried to play characters that strayed from who I am it ended in disaster. People didn't expect me in comedies or musicals.

Many musicals you can take and throw in the garbage can because no one took the time to write a song you can care about.

As a comedian, you're kind of like a blues musician; you have to live a little bit.

Once I put down a color, I never cover it up. If you are born a musician, why become a banker?

I have always felt I was more accurately a Hard Rock musician.

Even though I'm known as a pop musician, I have a seriousness about what I do.

I'm not trying to save the world. As a musician and artist, it just ain't me.

I've always felt like an imposter, in the whole, as a musician.

I don't have any desire to do something that sounds explicitly rock. Like, I don't have a burning need to be a rock musician. I feel like I've taken that as far as I can take it, for me.

I could care less about the radio or the TV or album sales. I want that connection with people because when I'm able to walk down the street, I want them to feel like I've done something for them and helped their life because I've never felt that way about a musician.

I'm not a musician making words to go with my music.

You don't want to make records so you can win a Grammy. You make records because you want to be a musician.

In my eyes, I think it's important that if you're doing something you're proud of and that is genuine and authentic, you have a responsibility to bring that to as many people as possible, just for the sheer reason that there are musicians out there who are manufacturing emotions that aren't genuine.

Musicians exist independent of any of the marketing terms or the categorization.

There's a lot of older musicians who say your whole life making music, you're really trying to get back to that first couple of things you liked when you were a kid. And as much as you might like to think you're not, you really are.

In other words, musicians know that going back to the Spoonful, what we were doing was not copying.

We're not spokespeople, we're musicians.