Charli XCX

When you're growing up, I think there's this idea that the coolest people are the ones who are really rude and feverish. But I've come to realize that isn't cool.

Most of my favorite artists are strong females.

Females should stand by each other, especially in an industry which seems to try so hard to pin us up against each other and make us fight. It's not about that for me. I refuse to be sucked into a twisted world of insecurity and lose who I am.

My philosophy is to treat people how you want to be treated.

If there's intelligence behind an opinion, then I'm all for expressing it, but I would never just start a fight with someone for the sake of it - that's just not me.

My real friends are definitely the people I grew up with - the people who don't care about my music career at all.

I loved Justice and Uffie and everyone signed to the label Ed Banger. They were really influential to me when first started making music.

I was never the cool kid in school, and loads of people told me that I was weird, that I dressed uncool and did uncool things, that I was too nice, too happy.

When I was younger, I was a rave kid trapped inside a singer/songwriter's body. But I kind of figured my way out because I started making these really terrible beats on this Yamaha keyboard that my parents got me for my 10th birthday.

I've always said that if I couldn't be myself, first I'd want to be Eminem and then a Disney kid.

I've passed up on many a thing that could have made me a big artist or something. Like, I was offered a feature on a Christina Aguilera song and I turned it down. It just wasn't right. She's cool, but it just wasn't right.

I feel like I can be six different people in one day sometimes. Which is fun but also really strange in my own brain.