Women Guitarists

"I am waiting here for more. I am waiting by your door. I am waiting on your back steps. I am waiting in my car. I am waiting at this bar. I am waiting for your essence."

"There are things about you that make me wanna scream and shout. There are things about you that make me wanna lock you out. But there's a little thing that drives me wild, Something that happens every time you smile. I can't get over the lines around your eyes, Lines around your eyes every time you smile."

"Music brought me closer to the idea of God…Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief."

"I would rather suffer sweet silent solitude, Deathly defiant from drowning out. Filthy sounds stumbling, ugly and cruel Between the lips of your beautiful mouth.Deep down within me words move in phases, Frozen and still until they decide To melt and drip over the pages, Until that moment they live inside."

"…I would say it's not not about Warren Beatty. But I can't understand why there's been such intense interest about this over the years and I don't really want to play into that. To me, it's not an issue. It's a kind of a fun riddle."

"I pretended I was Cat Stevens. I started out with very Cat Stevensy chords, very abrupt. I was so stuck in the moment of being fearful so as a lesson to myself I said: ‘but we can never know about the days to come’. I didn’t know when the door-bell was going to ring. I liked that. It was all of a sudden a quarter to eight and I had written the whole song."

"You know, that's so much a part of life, being able to embrace the broken heart, not just cast it off as having no meaning or trying to get rid of it. I think in the book gives a very good journey through the way I handled things that were desperately frightening for me."

"I grew up with lots of mystery in my house…I was always feeling on shaky ground when I was growing up. I didn’t know what was what, and that led me to feel very insecure."

"I think what informs my songwriting is my empathy with that. Maybe that’s what bothers people. It scares them to go to the edge of the well and look in. But it’s what they like also. And wouldn’t you rather feel the pain than not feel anything?"

"The time I enjoy music most is when it’s not a performance. It’s just trading instrumentals and finding that part in the song that you feel best singing."

"I was always into different kinds of music but just by default, I was singing and playing acoustic guitar; I didn’t know how to dance or anything. So it would take some time, over a year, for me to kind of progress into the stuff that I ended up doing later, the more Southern soul, country-rock, whatever-you-want-to-call-it kind of thing."

"I grew up being aware that I was Southern, and that being a very important thing for me. And being drawn to short story writers, like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty—the surroundings in their stories were so familiar to me, the whole Southern Gothic thing. That world only existed in that part of the country. It’s going to inform the personality of the songs. In a lot of my songwriting, I mention towns and places. It’s a culturally traditional thing in the South to tell stories."

"I know—they treat it like it’s a big phenomena. It would be like, “all-girl band” or “girl drummer” and I’d be like, “Why can’t you just say drummer?” Female this, female that. It’s an oddity."

"When I was growing up in the seventies, there were more open spaces. There weren't McMansions really. L.A. always had an interesting array of architecture in the houses. Like one would be a ranch house, another could be a Tudor house. It is fitting that there are all these different styles that almost were predetermined by L.A. being a place where different people moved."

"If people are listening, you can feel this intense concentration, and it builds a level of trust…I can be vulnerable in a way that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to be if I was just talking. There’s something about music and electricity and the free-flowing, less-contained aspect – it’s like being in the ocean. What’s the inside and what’s outside?"

"I never think of myself as famous anyway, like, if anything, it’s barely famous."

"Well, it sort of bothers me that if a man is doing it, then it's fine. Like, if a woman had Bob Dylan's voice, how far would she have gotten? Or Leonard Cohen? And men can get away with saying more things that are—I don't know, it's kind of like, everyone could sit around and pat each other on the back. And that's not very interesting."

"I like a certain amount of tension in music…I like the kind of music that maybe makes you think about the status quo."

"I don’t, really. I mean, the one thing is more women playing music. That allows you to have different personalities, so it kind of cuts through the clichés about how women are perceived. But I don’t really think things in the mainstream have changed so much. In the underground, it seems like there’s a lot more women involved in the scene, which mostly comes out of male record collectors, so it was surprising in the late ’80s to start seeing more girls and women involved with experimental music as that scene grew. That’s pretty cool.”"

"Your life is hard to change. But at the same time, I've also always felt that I'm the same person now as I was at five, so I've been sort of reaching out to that too, in a way."

"I don't wanna think that I'm influential or an icon or blah blah blah blah...Ultimately, I feel most confident when I'm just working. Thinking about ideas. That's how I'm most comfortable. Or performing in a group situation."

"It was the tip of the iceberg…There’s some unseen wall of faceless men that I have to climb over…as if on a mission."

"The image a lot of people have of me as detached, impassive, or remote is a persona that comes from years of being teased for every feeling I ever expressed."

"“By the time it was done my heart was pounding like I just saw the rest of my life. I was fucking doomed.”"

"“When people looked at me they couldn’t recognize any of the history of me, like, ‘Where is she from? What’s her ethnicity? Who is she?’ I just didn’t make sense to anybody.”"

"“In tenth grade—this says a lot about how developmentally delayed I was—I had in my mind that it was the proper thing for me to have a love interest. And you’d see in movies where two characters instantly see each other and are, like, I’m in love!, and then it just cuts to them on a date or interacting...A lot of my adolescence was like that. Me thinking I was doing the right thing by re-creating a movie scene that I’d seen but then realizing that’s not how it happens in real life.”"

"“The phrase ‘Be the cowboy you want to see in the world’ has been an inside joke between me and myself…I would always kind of say it to myself in situations where I feel like I’m sort of trapped in my own mind. Like, ‘Oh, what would a swaggering, western movie cowboy do in this situation?’”"

""I think the theme that I unfortunately saw—unfortunately for me—was the theme of loneliness or the idea of being alone…And the idea of being alone, not because the world is forcing you to be alone but because you are the person causing your aloneness…”"

"I felt it was shaving away my soul little by little…The music industry is this supersaturated version of consumerism. You are the product being consumed, bought, and sold. Even the people on your team who are your friends, the very foundation of your dynamic is that they get a percentage of your income. Every time I turned something down, it would mean that they would make less money."

"“It's not like [the album’s protagonist] is a fictional character, but I noticed a personality in me that was very obsessed with control and feeling like I have power — because I am powerless and don't have a lot of control. So I kind of investigated that person in me. What is the exaggerated form? Well, it's a woman who's incredibly controlled, severe, and austere. But maybe there's some kind of deep desire or emotion that's whirling around in her and trying to get out. Maybe she's losing control.”"

"“I think it's a very feminine album…There can be something incredibly violent about being a woman and having desires as a woman – not so nice, not so soft. And I think that's an interesting experience to draw on…""

"I think there is in my previous albums a very useful romanticization or glorification of a sadness...wherein Be the Cowboy, there's a realization that no one gives a shit that you're sad, and you're still sad. Your sadness is no longer profound, and you're still sad. It's that kind of growing up and realizing that it's not cool anymore to be sad, but you're still sad."

"I’ve often found myself in a situation where, narratively speaking, I’m the bad guy,” she says. “We can acknowledge more than just black and white. If you present something that feels true to you, there will be other people who are like, ‘This is true to me too.’"

"“You always want what you can’t have, and that all-American thing, from the day I was born, I could never enter that dream. That all-American white culture is something that is inherited instead of attained. So yes, it’s a sad song, but I wanted to make sure it reflected all of the contrasting feelings. You can be heartbroken about a relationship, but also, from it, realize you are you and you’re okay with who you are, or where you came from.”"

"“…this song is quite autobiographical because I didn't grow up in the U.S. I am half Japanese, and it came from wanting to just fit into this very American person's life and simply not being able to. Just fundamentally being from a different place and feeling like I would just get in the way of their progression if their life, because I could just never get to wherever they're naturally going.”"

"People think I was writing it for a group of people, when actually I was writing about one person. The truth was, I loved this person so much, and us being from different worlds kept getting in the way."

"“…A lot of the ‘yous’ in my songs are abstract ideas about music...I will neglect everything else, including me as a person, just to get to keep making music…And even if it actually sometimes hurts, it doesn’t matter as long as I get to be a musician.”"

"“Even when I’m in a scene I don’t think of myself as being in the scene. I’m very conscious of myself being an outsider. I think that has to do with my upbringing outside of the US – not just my heritage but that I grew up differently. I moved to a different country every year or every other year…a lot of different places due to my father’s occupation.”"

"“It was right around Christmas… and it was kind of too expensive for me to try to fly back from Australia to the U.S. on holiday prices, so I just decided to stay in that side of the world. I went to Malaysia instead…I thought it would be a great vacation, but I went alone, and I went during the holidays when everyone else is spending time with their families, and so, long story short, I ended up feeling incredibly, devastatingly alone… I think of myself as, you know, a very solitary, kind of introverted person, so I didn’t plan for loneliness, and then it just happened and I didn’t know what to do about it. So I wrote a song.”"

"“…it was actually about when you have some kind of toxic relationship to yourself, or to another person, for so long that it becomes your identity. Even when you don't need it anymore and you've stepped away from it, you still hold on to it because it's scary to let it go — because if you actually let it go, it feels like erasing yourself. That song is about likening that sort of toxicity to a pearl.”"

"“I’ve always grown up feeling lonely or other, but through my music, I can be like: ‘Look, we’re the same, we’ve felt the same thing, so we’re not so different. I belong here.’ It’s almost like a hungry monster that’s just a constant need to feel connection.”"

"“I was always bothered when people say, ‘I cry to your music, it sounds like a diary, it sounds so personal,’…Yes, it is personal. But that’s so gendered. There’s no feeling of, ‘Oh, maybe she’s a songwriter and she wrote this as a piece of art.’”"

"“I write personal stories about relationships, and living in this world and being a human being…but I happen to live in a world which views me as an Asian American. So my experiences are tainted by that, even if I’m not conscious of it. Someone said ‘the personal is political’, where it seems like me just being honest about my experiences as a human being and as a person translates as being political about being an Asian American person. I’m not in this to be political or a social activist, it just happens that my being honest is a very political thing.”"

"“I like to say something in as little time as possible…I don’t think I have the fundamental confidence necessary to write a four-minute meandering song. Number one – because I'm impatient. But number two – because I’ve never been someone who is listened to. No one would stop to listen to me. I'm not a white guy noodling on a guitar for 45 minutes. No one would stay for me. I learned from a young age to be concise because there’s a very small window for me to grab someone's attention.”"

"“I’d always been fascinated by death, which sounds so morbid. Especially being a woman trying to make music, I think there’s a sense that you’re never young enough, or your career is going to end soon. So there’s that element of ‘I’m going to die soon.’ Maybe not physically, but I’m going to run out of time very soon. It’s always on my mind. I have to do things now."

"I wouldn’t say it’s an alter ego, but I have anxiety around social situations, and I don’t like going to parties…As a performer, onstage I know my place. I’m sure of myself. There’s no doubt. It’s just existing, and it’s so lovely to get to be for an hour."

"Taiwan is a free, democratic and liberal nation, so the government would not issue a mask ban, but the government would not tolerate masked thugs, such as the man who tossed red paint on Hong Kong singer and rights advocate Denise Ho on the sidelines of a rally last month."

"This [to be arrested because taking part in the student-led pro-democracy movement] is part of my responsibility as an adult and celebrity, to fill the responsibility of civil disobedience."

"Real freedom can't be eradicated. It is our civic duty to continue to go to the streets."

"If you were there behind every family's closed doors, everyone's a little wacko. Chances are that your family is no weirder than the next family, or than the other girl at school's family. Everyone can be quirky at times, and I embrace that, personally."