Women Singers From The United States

""I believe the universe wants to give, and if we ask very clearly what it is that we want, I believe that we receive exactly what we want"."

"Interview: Linda Perry by Katherine Yeske Taylor,25 April 2021 Retrieved 23/11/2023"

""I think most people manifest everything that happens in their life"."

"After college I went on to play football for Chicago Force Women’s Professional Football Team as the starting quarterback and I was quarterback for Team USA where I was able to lead the U.S. Women’s National Team to three gold medal wins. But even through this experience, I faced gender stereotypes, lack of funding and sponsorships, no unified league, and no awareness or recognition."

"I played ball during my freshman and sophomore years at RHS, I was a quarterback. My teammates and coaches were incredible, but there were many instances where I was not given the opportunity to play, likely because I’m a woman."

"Like I said, my teammates were amazing…many times they backed me up when an opponent spit on me, kicked me or called me names. The entire experience of having a female on the football team was new for my teammates, coaches and the parents. All I wanted was to be treated equal."

"“I found peace and balance.”"

"Back in the day, the music industry was my God"

"You have to stay patient and stick with whatever is best for you…If it doesn’t work out, don’t beat yourself up about it – just keep going until you find the right one."

"And I always want my product to be what's in my heart, so I'm writing and in the sessions. It sounds like me because I'm there."

"The best thing about getting older [is] learning how powerful human connections can be…It’s great when two people can share something deeper than just lust and passion between them – something real and lasting."

"You know what you want more clearly…you’re less likely to settle or compromise your standards just because somebody looks good or says all the right things."

"And what I'm doing is stepping into my confidence and my power to create my own beauty standard. And one day that will just be the standard."

"I feel like women who are smaller aren't really given the opportunities to be body-positive or role models either because we've been conditioned to believe that women are using their bodies for the male gaze."

"You realize that people truly care about you and they’ll help you, and they don’t mind helping you."

"I take self-love very seriously. And I take it seriously because when I was younger, I wanted to change everything about myself"

"I like to make music that you can use to motivate yourself, because I’m going to be singing that every single day on stage. I’m not trying to sing no curses in my life."

"I think that’s part of the prejudice lens that most human beings are kind of taught to build. Very judgmental. Everyone’s really mean to themselves and to others"

"Lizzo is learning self-love, practicing hope, and making space to let everyone in by Rayne Fisher-Quann. Retrieved 9/11/2023."

"Whatever you’re doing, if you feel like you’re in this place, and it seems to be working, stay there. Don’t allow other things to make you second-guess yourself, as long as it feels good to you."

"People don’t realize that artists are sensitive or that they have feelings."

"Music is a male-dominated field. Women are not always taken as seriously as we should be, so sometimes we have to put our foot down."

"I always try to remember who I am."

"Because nobody knows your vision better than you do. Nobody can tell your story as you can. You have to live it."

"So always fight for yourself and believe in yourself and your vision."

"And it’s okay to say, ‘Hey, I’m not okay today.’"

"Be the truest form of yourself. If you go with what everybody else is doing you may risk falling into the crevices and the cracks, because there's so many people doing the same thing."

"When I create music, it's not just about the song. I have to visually see something in my head too."

"I figured out how to set myself apart and create my own name and really figure out what that meant."

"You have those times when you’re trying to fit a square into a circle. I’ve been through girl groups. I went through people saying I didn’t have it. I wasn’t special or I didn’t have the look. It really affects a person’s spirit. My manager, she told me that, ‘You are enough.’ And she also told me that it’s okay to be vulnerable. I took it and applied it to my artistry and it really helped me evolve into what you see now."

"You don’t always have to take yourself so seriously all of the time. It still should be a joyful experience in making music. You can definitely hear that in my album. And I really learned that you should seize the moment; you should be present in the moment. It was just a great time musically for me. I evolved so much during Opera Noir, during my album, and it’s just so apparent in the music, in the delivery and the execution of it all. So I’m proud of it."

"You don’t always need all of the bells and the whistles. I learned in my life, throughout my journey, that I’m enough. I don’t need all of the extras. I just live my truth, and as long as I do that, I feel like I’ll be good in whatever circumstance. I apply that to life, to my music, to being a young lady out here. I just have to live my truth and know that it’s okay to rock on my own vibration, because I’m me. I try to stand by that code, especially as a young Black woman in this industry. I try to walk the walk and talk the talk."

"I really love to do it all, but singing has opened so many doors for me. And that’s definitely a true passion of mine. It’s a natural, God-given gift. I always find comfort in singing, so singing is number one. Acting, modeling: those go hand-in-hand and I enjoy those too."

"Grew up in the sticks where there ain't no light But the stars were big and bright If they told me no I would always wonder why But I tried to be good And keep my head down But there was too much sky around And my daddy said Keep lookin' up"

"If you can't lose the weight, then you're just fat But if you lose too much, then you're on crack You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't So, you might as well just do whatever you want So, make lots of noise (Hey), kiss lots of boys (Yeah)"

"There is a light at the end of the tunnel There is a light inside of me Tried not to show it To make you feel good Pretended I couldn't"

"Get a little drunk, get a little loud Stupid me and my rebel mouth Ain't all wrong but I ain't alright Don't see the world in black and white And I ain't good at being careful I just say what's on my mind Like my idea of heaven Is to burn one with John Prine"

"Bursting with empathy I'm feeling everything The weight of the world on my shoulders Hope my tears don't freak you out They're just kinda coming out It's the music in me and all of the colors"

"When I grew bored, I would lock myself in the bathroom and by on my mother's dresses that were in the hamper. I'd stand there as long as I could, looking at myself in the mirror, wishing I was someone else, wishing I was her. Who was "her"? She was the person I imagined myself to be, in another dimension, in a past life, in some dream. I had never heard of gender dysphoria; the idea that your psychological and emotional gender identities do not match your assigned sex at birth. I didn't have a name for the way I felt. No information was available, and there was no adult that I could trust with my secret. I thought I was schizophrenic, or that my body was possessed by warring twin souls: one male, one female, both wanting control. I would look down at my body in a dress and blur my vision until it almost felt real. My eyes scanned upward, hoping to see her face, but I would only find an insecure teenage boy dressed in women's clothes. I'd do this until it was time to take the dress off and go through the motions of flushing the toilet and pretending to wash my hands before stepping back into reality."

"One night, I stumbled upon a sports almanac there. There was a two-paragraph article in it about Renée Richards, the professional tennis player who underwent a male-to-female sex change. This was the first time I'd ever heard of such a concept. I could hardly believe it was really possible. In the sanctuary of the attic, I read those two paragraphs over and over. I wanted this so badly, but didn't know how to make it happen. All those sleepless nights praying to God for this one miracle never got me a word back. After everyone was asleep, in a moment of pure desperation, I turned to Satan. [...] "I pledge my allegiance to the Dark Lord in exchange for..." I vowed to do whatever he wanted. I offered my soul, anything in trade. I begged for Satan to please, please let me wake up a woman. Not a girl, but a fully grown woman; instant emancipation so that I could run away and escape it all. I had a full, intricate plan worked out in my head. I would wake up that next morning before the rest of my family and disappear into the woods, never to be seen again. I wrote out the contract and sided it in my own blood, but of course I never woke up the woman I wished to be."

"After church on Sundays, I would build forts with blankets and sheets, covering my bedroom from corner to corner. Underneath those bedding canopies I created a world of my own, my first experiences with privacy from my parents. To save space on storage, my mother kept her nylons in my bottom dresser drawer. I found them, and natural curiosity led me to try them on. I wondered what was so special about these shriveled brown socks that only my mom got to wear. In the dark secrecy of my forts, I lay on my back, stretched my legs up toward the sky, and slowly rolled the nylons down over my legs. I was almost hypnotized by the sensation of nylon on skin. This must be what it feels like to be a woman, I thought to myself. My father would walk by and see the sheets and blanket tent tops I had constructed over the furniture. "Tommy, what the hell are you doing in there?" he'd bark. "Nothing!" I'd call back, and I would roll the nylons off my legs and hide them as quick as I could. No one ever had to tell me that what I was doing in my fort was indecent behavior. I could just feel that it was wrong, as if I was born with the shame. I had already been caught playing Barbies with a neighbor girl. My father's reaction was a cold stare of disapproval and a new G.I. Joe. It was put to me bluntly that "little boys don't play with Barbie dolls like little girls do," and that was that."

"My confusion over my interest in women's bodies and clothing followed me throughout elementary school. I'd see older women on the street and want to be as pretty as they were. At 8 years old, I caught an edited version of Rosemary's Baby playing on late night network TV. While most kids would shy away from the terror of the Roman Polanski film, I was drawn in by the beauty of Mia Farrow. Her hair was short and blond, chopped into a pixie cut, not dissimilar to my own. I knew what it felt like to have hair so short, so she made femininity real and attainable to me. I had no idea what kind of adult I'd grow up to be, but she gave me something to aspire to. Maybe, just maybe, I would look like her one day."

"Like most kids who had their musical awakening in the 90s, I cut my teeth on Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." The utter simplicity of that song taught countless rock hopefuls like me how to form power chords and annoy their parents with them. Frontman Kurt Cobain singlehandedly calloused a whole generation of tiny fingers with those opening notes."

"Feeling pretty cute until I ran into you/ Chewed me up and spit me out like gum on your shoe/ And if you’re free and you’ve got nothing better to do/ Go ahead, destroy me, destroy me."

"As I enter this new moment, I wanted to explore the vulnerability I've felt in finding balance with submission, dominance, and sexuality. I've had to dive into my own body to feel the deeply powerful but also dangerous feelings of relinquishing control."

"As my closest friends and I have now begun to really grow into ourselves, it can feel heart-wrenching to witness people you love fall for a moment, or lose sight of the goodness they have within themselves when they're struggling. As a friend we just want to pick them up and show them who we really know them to be — to try to cheer so hard on the sidelines over how incredible they are, and how much they mean to us, but at the end of the day of course it's only them who can discover their own light on their own."

"Good luck when you wake up / And realize all that you've lost / Shining lies are what you're made of / I hope it's worth the price that it cost"

"So cherry chaotic, the taste of losing control / I'm chasing down the drip sip down the rabbit hole / Now I'm staring down the metal barrel of your gun / I surrender on a bender, you're the drug."

"Of course there’s an album on the way. There’s been actually lots of music that’s been put out. I guess the music journalists were more concerned with being tabloids than they were with paying attention to the music. I’ve released a lot of brilliant music in the last 10 years."

"A great example of colorism is to believe I can be compared to anyone,"