All of my walls are covered with framed pictures of my friends.
I've always written songs the same way. You learn different tricks - you learn craft, you learn structure, all that - as you go.
I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.
And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that's fine with me!
When I am talking to people who I feel don't like me or are mean, I get really shy, and I kind of curl up personality wise.
I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It's just funny. And wonderful.
When you say, 'I spent my summers at the Jersey Shore,' people always say, 'Oh, really?' They think of the TV show. So I just say, 'A cute little harbor town in New Jersey.'
If you cry over a guy, then your friends can't date him. It can't even be considered.
I was never a boy magnet at school. There was always the girl all the guys liked and wanted to date, but it was never me.
I'm the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that's horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.
'Love Story' is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn't like him. All of them!
I don't have a type. I don't have a specific kind of human being. It's just kind of an X-factor of sorts. Everybody I've ever dated has been a case-by-case situation.
I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written... Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn't have much of a social life going on.
When I'm in management meetings when we're deciding my future, those decisions are left up to me. I'm the one who has to go out and fulfill all these obligations, so I should be able to choose which ones I do or not. That's the part of my life where I feel most in control.
For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn't really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I'm trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.
I love dresses, and I've definitely thought about designing them someday. I just want to make sure that I wait until the time is perfect and I can do it right.
Most of my songs have names of people I've met or are dear to me. There are people who have privacy issues and about people knowing about their private life. But for me, I like to include few special names and few details about them to make the song very special to me.
For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.
I write songs that are like diary entries. I have to do it in order to feel sane.
I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.
