It's tragic that you can define a whole movement in music by gender alone. People are like, 'Oh, look, another quirky girl.'

You know, my mum's always encouraged me and never made my gender an issue, I guess. She brought me up to believe in equality, as opposed to feminism or sexism - so it just meant that my gender was not relevant to what I was capable of achieving.

I'm not a downtrodden woman. I just won't be.

When you research prolific songwriters, it is usually later in their career they write songs that they distance themselves from, or it's about other people.

I'm not a hopeless romantic. I'm quite the reverse. I'm a nasty piece of work, an ego maniac.

I'm 36 and if I met a woman of my own age and married her, I'd also be marrying her former life, her past. It might be OK for some people - I don't want to judge it or anything - but it's not for me. It would destroy my creativity.

Being black, Latino, or Asian is not a genre. Romantic comedies, thrillers, action - those are genres. I think there's a lot of people who want to have the conversation. I don't think people are afraid of it, I just think it's the time to have that conversation. Race is not a genre.

I ran to my marriage, I was happily ready to take on marriage.