When I first started out in this business, it was easy because nobody wanted anything from me. But now everyone wants something from me, so it's hard to break away and just be a songwriter.
It wasn't so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.
The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.
The first thing Fontana did was get me to change my hair colour from light brown to red, and the songwriter Mitch Murray suggested I change my name from Pauline Matthews to Kiki Dee.
And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.
Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.
I can only say thank you and thanks also to all of the great songwriters who wrote those wonderful songs that became number ones.
There's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.
Songwriting is something I really need to work on. I don't have very many songs but I really love it. I would love to be a great song writer some day.
I'm a great believer in not over-thinking lyrics. You might become technically better as a songwriter, but you lose what originally made your songs great.
I love Darius Rucker. He's a true artist, a great songwriter who can play his instrument, sing and write about his life.
As a songwriter, I was influenced by David Bowie - a great writer. A class above everybody in so many ways. Lennon and McCartney, of course. Class stuff. David Cousins was my favorite lyricist.
I'm good at melody - I'll write the top-line melody and ideal words I want to go with it. But I'm not that good at writing lyrics. I bounce those back and forth with songwriters or someone who can sing.
I'm not particularly good at anything. I'm not an incredible guitarist or piano player or songwriter. I think what I do is, when I notice someone is really good at something, I try to get that out of them.
I think I'm an artistic radical, and I think I'll be recognized as one. I'm a really good musician and a songwriter, but I think my real legacy will be as a radical.
When I got signed as a songwriter, I immediately thought, 'Oh, no one sees me as an artist because I don't look good enough.' So I shut down the whole idea.
I am a songwriter at heart, and I feel like I would, in the future, write songs for other people. I don't think I want to pursue it for myself, for a solo career.
When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
Early in my songwriting career, when I was learning a lot about writing songs, I'd force myself to sit down until I came up with something.
I'd love to claim the title of 'songwriter' or 'intellectual,' but the truth is that anything that I ever learned how to do in conjunction with music was purely so that I would have a platform to sing from.
People expect not just songwriters but all personalities to pontificate about their egos - they just wanna see someone talking about themselves constantly. I'm not interested in that.
