Bibi Bourelly

Music is a lot more powerful than anyone gives it credit for. I can sing something right now and make you feel something that you would not feel if I said it. If somebody can sing and connect to people just through voice, just through sonics, capturing an emotion, that's a direct string to somebody's soul.

I've seen people pass away. I've seen how fragile life is.

There's nothing wrong with writing for other artists, but that's just not what my purpose is.

My songs are always on the tip of my tongue. It's always bubbling and brewing and about to come out. I can't really put it into words, but the best way to explain it is feeling like you constantly have some things on the tip of your tongue.

I just am really bad at making new friends - especially in the music industry, because they're not really real friends; they're just music industry friends.

I remember the first time I ever wrote down a song was when I was 6. I was at my friend Emma's house, and we wrote a song called 'Girls' Rules.'

I was born in Berlin, and when I was 6, my mom passed. When I was 9, I moved to near Washington, D.C., where I lived with my aunt and uncle. And then at 11, I moved back to Berlin. And then at 16, I got in trouble in school and moved back to the Washington area.

I just want to unify people. A crowd full of people singing one song... that doesn't derive from anything dishonest... It's someone's truth.

We cannot afford to have lies in music.

I'm the type of person who really wants to exist and live honestly, to just say what I have to say and be who I am and do what I want.

I fell in love with singing, and through singing, I learned how to write songs. Anything you're consistent with and that you do all the time, you're gonna reap benefits off it at one point. You're not gonna get worse!

There's so much judgment geared toward young girls. People just expect so much from girls. Even physically and aesthetically, people expect us to always look right, to have a certain etiquette - to talk a certain way and act a certain way - and to know certain things. It's all different expectations, but there are always expectations.

One of the biggest challenges for me is that I'm still a human being. I'm a very imperfect human being. I'm very open about the fact that I'm not trying to pretend to be better than anyone else.

I love making music. I love that it's unstructured, that I get to go perform and play in front of people, to meet new people. I love to do the thing I'm best at every day.

A lot of the songs that I wrote during 'Pt. 1' and 'Pt. 2' are the first songs that I ever wrote that sounded like that. I was in this phase - a certain creative space in my life - personally and musically.

I'm not a machine that just comes up with records and can give them away easily.

I'm out here living my dream. People are listening to my music.

A lot of things change when one is granted success: random people pop up, and a lot of the adjustments are rough. My way of coping with them is through focusing on the things that I have accomplished and the things that are yet to come.

My dad and I speak better when we play together.

I would never say I 'play' guitar. But yeah, I play to write. Same with piano.

Me going to college was not an option.

Sometimes I hate writing songs. Because it hurts sometimes. I'm very emotional.

Opportunities don't always come dressed in neon colors.

I think a lot of my angst comes from feeling unaccepted.

I can deal with imperfection, but I can't deal with people who lie to themselves and lie to the world to make the world feel better.

I want music to really unite people, more than the way a pop single unites people. I want to unite people through their pain and really change mentalities, change minds, and change perspectives.

I don't want to, in the last three minutes of my life, know that I lived it for somebody else.

Working with Rihanna has changed my life.

As far as songwriting, I'm not sure if they wrote all of their own stuff, but I love the Dixie Chicks.

My dad raised me on everything from his music to Stevie Wonder to A Tribe Called Quest. I learned the 'Midnight Marauders' album in and out.

My dad is Jean-Paul Bourelly, a really prestige guitar player in Europe, and he toured with Miles Davis. I was always surrounded by the most prestige kind of musicians from Senegal, Trinidad, Poland, Nigeria, and all around the world.

I think that I can't help but put my personal pain in my music because there's a lot of it. That's my therapy.

If I talk to a new guy, it's because the old guy bores me, and I already wrote a bunch of songs about him.

Fortunately and unfortunately, what I love entails, and makes, a lot of money.

My talent before singing is being able to interpret and understand my emotions. I've felt pain and felt it intensely, so every time I sing, I revisit it.

Think about how many dreams die with people - if you don't believe in yourself, whatever you're doing is for no reason.

My music comes from heartbreak - from feeling what it's like to lose everything and not being able to express it through words because it doesn't make sense.

People who are their own entity and aren't afraid to be who they are can move a nation. I believe the height of my career is going to be during the start of a revolution.

School, for me, was a really, genuinely hard thing. It was hard because l am an artist. You can't send an artist to a place where we learn at a mad slow pace sitting in a class.

A lot of senior artists say that they support women, but they have a machine of people behind them telling them to be that way. l don't think it's always true and genuine.

At the end of the day, l just want to be myself. I don't set out to be like anyone else.

What people think of you doesn't matter, because I believe anything's possible. No one's going to convince me I'm not capable of living up to my full potential, because I've obsessed over that idea. The universe wants me to be great for me.

A writer is an artist. They're creating things out of thin air.

'Sally' is just a song that I wrote talking to my alter ego. When I write, I don't really consciously say, 'This is what I've been going through in my life, and I'm gonna put this into words.' It's just a song that I kinda went in and did. Then, listening back to it, I realized, 'I'm talking to myself.'

I started writing songs before I could talk - at three or four. It was in me, and I had to get it out. It was all freestyle, which is how I write anyway. I don't write the words down; I scat and come up with the melody, then the lyrics.

The music industry is hard work, especially for women. A lot of people pit us against each other, comparing two body types or two women that are completely different. It's a lot of pressure.

I got to meet Kanye West because we were shopping my artist deal, and I was interested in his label. When I met him, I played him all the records I had. He introduced me to Rihanna, and she recorded and cut some of those records.

To the outside world, I was pretty bad at everything my whole life. People didn't credit me for my musicianship.

All of my songwriting success happened within a four month time span, and my record label deal happened within the next three months.

I always do what makes me happy - it doesn't make sense to live life unhappily.