Natalie Prass

I think it's just my personality, or maybe just because I've been playing music for so long and working so hard at it, that I don't expect anything from it anymore. I just do my work and then hope that it works out.

Gospel talks about life's struggles, but you always feel like it recognizes these struggles and that you can overcome them.

There came a point when I was thinking, 'I'm now 26, 27, working on music every day, but I'm not making, like, a lot of money. What's happening? I guess I'll just start making dog clothes.'

That's what's so wonderful about collaborating: your idea can explode and become something else.

Break-up albums are the best kind.

We still have so far to go as a country. People don't like to listen to women or take orders from them. I feel that a lot as a woman playing music.

Stevie Wonder is obviously the master at political music that's for everybody, that's still joyful.

I've always been very shy. Now I don't care anymore.

I got offered publishing deals to write country music, but it was not what I wanted to do.

I was poor. I struggled big time, living hand to mouth so I could be the kind of artist I want to be.

I'm pretty picky about what I do and who I work with, for better or for worse.

I'm one of those people who don't want to share anything 'til it's a done deal.

Music is what makes you feel joyful and makes me feel like I'm not alone. It's everything.

Music, for me, has always been a community thing. It's always how I make friends and hang out with people, because I didn't know how to do that. This is what makes me special.

I'm not really a trend person.

My kind of retro-sounding songs, or whatever you want to call them, aren't for everybody.

Like Lenny Kravitz, I wanna make the world a better place; I wanna unify people.

I've always been in this weird indie world, and for a long time, I felt that it was not okay to be girly in that world.

Women are against women, and men are against women. Like, women have to rise above so much to get ahead. I feel guilty that sometimes I hate being a woman. I hate it because there's so much weight on your shoulders at all times. Maybe I'm just really sensitive.

I wasn't taken seriously being the only girl playing in band growing up.

I'm a very loyal and compassionate person.

It's an artist's choice to speak up about social issues, but I think it's really important, and my favorite artists have spoken out.

I want to talk about things that are actually important.

I love how controversial pink is. Men still feel uncomfortable wearing pink. It's ridiculous.

When I was growing up, my dad would always be playing Motown around the house. He loved Stevie Wonder and the Supremes and got me into Dionne Warwick. It was the best music I'd ever heard. It was just that extremely deep, human, thought-out stream of ideas. You can always hear something new when you listen to that music.

I've always been very driven and am also very stubborn.

You go through so many changes, especially in your twenties.

If you want to make something of yourself, you have to just do it relentlessly.

It is like an addiction: I get addicted to performing and touring. I get itchy and think, 'I've got to do this.'

There are a lot more variables with festivals than just playing in a venue.

I've always liked playing with somebody else and collaborating, just to get out of my own head all the time. Everybody does, but artists especially, we torture ourselves. So it's good for me to immerse myself in somebody else's work.

Nashville has pushed me to improve constantly as few other places could, and I'm grateful for that.

When you're that age - that middle-school age, early high school - you're changing. You're going crazy. So I put all of my energy into pretending I was someone else, battling and screaming and all that stuff - casting spells and getting into a whole fantasy world. It was really healthy for me.

I blindly loved music and never once questioned if I was weird or not. I didn't care. Still don't!

Who doesn't love a Disney princess, and who wouldn't want to be one? Belle is my favorite. She's the smart, awkward, and adventurous. She doesn't have too many friends - goes off and hangs out with talking silverware. I think it's great.

I'm the kind of writer that, once I get into writing mode in my brain, I'm non-stop.

I'm really into the 'classic' thing - the craft of writing something that will last, that won't die by next year.

I get kind of nervous in crowds, so a musical festival would never be something I would go to, unless I was playing.

I'm such an emotional person that when it comes to songwriting, I can click into whatever zone I need.

I've struggled with self-esteem and depression, like most singer-songwriters. I listen to my EPs on Bandcamp, and I can just hear the pain and the self-esteem struggle in my voice.

I do always write from a personal place.

If you want to be a songwriter, you've got to obsess over it.

I do what I want to do instead of what other people think I should do, and I'm kind of stubborn that way.

I'm definitely someone who's really picky about who I work with and how I want things to go, because I have a high standard of integrity for my music. I want it to be genuine.

My dad gave me the 'Introducing Dionne Warwick' album when I was, like, 14. It was the first time I'd heard Burt Bacharach's songwriting and her voice, and it rocked my world. She's such a great singer and communicator. It really helped me shape my own style.

I come from the most normal family. I've always been the oddball.

After graduating college in 2010, I got to work - writing and co-writing all the time, playing and touring in bands, playing for other people's bands, working in coffee shops all over town.

I don't think I'm the most talented musician or the best singer, but I work really, really hard.

When I made dog sweaters, as goofy as that was, I made this product, and people could buy it, and I got money immediately. Music was just this ethereal land of maybe, a lot of waiting and waiting. You live your life around hoping you get a five-thousand-dollar royalty check that usually doesn't come.

I had a fairy shrine in my room, and I went to fairy LARPing camp, and I played Dungeons and Dragons in the woods.