My producer, Michael Knox, he's kind of my eyes and ears on Music Row. While I'm out on the road, he's looking for songs, and then he and I will get together and go over songs.
I'd do entire music videos in my bedroom, where I used to stand in front of my television memorizing the moves to Michael Jackson's 'Beat It.'
If anyone can figure out how to balance my celebrity and my dual careers in music and film, it's me. I don't feel frightened; I feel challenged.
I started growing my audience in small clubs through word-of-mouth. I started making music that isn't necessarily commercially viable, and it's not necessarily marketable to my peers to a certain extent.
My songs are all about celebrating poignant music. While some of them focus on fun and revelry, they are fortunately backed by powerful lyrics. Put together, the lyrics, tune and my voice strive to take the songs to the next level.
When I graduated college, I had a fairly successful weekly club gig and was buying more studio equipment and writing my own music. I realized I didn't want to work.
I'd refer to myself as a feminist. I don't think my music is overtly rooted in feminism. I'm a teenager, and 95 percent of my friends are boys, and that's just the way I've always been.
For years I wrote in my basement. More recently I graduated to one floor above, an office with all my books and music and - ta da! - a window.
While I was into many different types of music, and played with many different local groups, I really didn't have a band to call my own until Dire Straits was formed in 1977.
I am a futurist, projecting trends in science into the next decades and century, but ironically my two daughters - one is a neuroscientist and the other is a pastry chef - tell me that my taste in music is positively prehistoric.
Music is my only guide. I don't care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn't give a hoot about what the purists said.
Along the way, I've had different advice from different music producers. I've been told to tone it down, that the quiet parts of my voice are appealing and there's harshness to the loud part of my voice.
I've hosted the Soul Train awards, the American Music Awards... and I had my own talk show. So if I can't host by now, what the hell can I do?
It is one thing to record an album but it's a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.
My genre of music is very eclectic. I might play some Latin jazz, or just go into a spontaneous jazz thing. That's the thing about coming to one of my performances. Not every show is the same.
I refuse to step inside the ring and fight like a gladiator against my own. I'm not playing that game. Any woman who has survived a year or more of making music has my undying respect.
I wanted my new release 'Get Back Up' to benefit Haiti in their tragedy and I am blessed to use my music to help as your purchase becomes our gift.
I always tell myself, 'When I'm working on my record, I won't cut my hair.' I get so focused on the music that I'm not really going to the hair shop and getting cut up. I just have one thing to focus on.
I still have a passion for the music, which is such a beautiful thing. I still wake up in the middle of the night out of a dream and have a melody in my head, and run to my piano.
There are a lot of women at my gigs. The first show I headlined was a sea of women, which I can't complain about. I'm pleased these 18-year-old girls like my music.
I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.
