"Aerosmith's Pump is one of my favorite records, so you can go the other way and just have it be simple and loud. Or it can be as simple as a Hank Williams record. There's room for everything. It just depends on if it's done well." - Shawn Colvin
"As soon as I picked up the instrument I wrote 10 or 20 songs during the first year I was beginning to play." - Shawn Colvin
"Be true to yourself and believe in what you do and stick to it. Because if you're like me, you wouldn't want to bend yourself around so much to please someone, then get somewhere with it and then have to live with it." - Shawn Colvin
"Cynicism is tough. A cynic's point of view is really pitiful. I derive pleasure out of a lot of things in life. As long as I'm fairly healthy, it's hard to stay dismal for very long." - Shawn Colvin
"Every new project has its way of getting done. It's a process, and I thought I'd cracked it last time, because making that record was fairly smooth, but this record wasn't. It was harder to make, harder to get the songs out, and more time consuming." - Shawn Colvin
"Fleetwood Mac had just become big at the time and Bonnie Raitt was a favourite of mine; I would cover some strange things as well. I still do actually!" - Shawn Colvin
"From stumbling upon my voice came a system, a security, a net, that I could fall into and do something that I really think was unique to me. And it definitely had to do with being confessional and personal." - Shawn Colvin
"Great songwriters don't always choose to hang in this lifestyle and this profession and try to make a go of it-they find other jobs, they have families, and they continue to write but you're never going to hear their songs." - Shawn Colvin
"Hopefully as an individual you grow, so the particulars change somewhat, but I've got a certain overview, a certain character, and that always pretty much stays the same." - Shawn Colvin
"I always wanted to write. I wrote a lot when I was a teenager and was learning the guitar." - Shawn Colvin
"I began playing professionally when I was about 19. I was in college, and the opportunity just arose to begin playing at these places. I no longer cared about being in school." - Shawn Colvin
"I consider myself as a singer first, but something that really helped me come into my own is that there's not a separation between me singing and me playing the guitar. The two fed off the other." - Shawn Colvin
"I don't feel butterflies; I feel ready to go." - Shawn Colvin
"I don't feel compelled to put to rest any ideas." - Shawn Colvin
"I don't know that I have a distinct style. I truly don't have any perspective on that, and when I hear myself singing back it's still difficult." - Shawn Colvin
"I don't like doing what's expected. I've always done best when I've listened to my instincts rather than following convention or doing what other people think I should do." - Shawn Colvin
"I find videos extremely annoying. I've done four, but getting them played is a problem. VH-1 & MTV are like radio stations." - Shawn Colvin
"I got the first verse on the way to therapy." - Shawn Colvin
"I had a baby, and that's what was time-consuming. I just shifted my focus, but I've been real busy-just not doing music, except for the last year or so making this record." - Shawn Colvin
"I had had relationships with a lot of ill-will, which just seems so wrong, but it was in my life." - Shawn Colvin
"I have a short attention span and even when I'm not completely satisfied with a line here and there I generally leave it as it is." - Shawn Colvin
"I have found that airplanes have been a good time for things to come out or for problems to be solved. Like if there's a section to a song that I can't seem to finish, I've had solutions come up when my mind's been suspended." - Shawn Colvin
"I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music." - Shawn Colvin
"I like lyricists, I like Elvis Costello, David Byrne; I like watching the way people put words together and the art of how vague you can be yet paint a specific picture. I can be totally slayed by an entirely straightforward lyric." - Shawn Colvin
"I moved to California in 1979 and was in a quandary about what to do with my life. I was playing music, but to pass the time I would write snippets of things. I never finished anything." - Shawn Colvin
"I realised that the way that I'd always felt best about what I could do was when I was singing and accompanying myself on acoustic guitar and there was a folk basis to it. Since then, the songwriting's been a lot easier." - Shawn Colvin
"I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people." - Shawn Colvin
"I think you've got to be brave in this business or in anything where you become somewhat public because you're not allowed to really experiment or fail in public." - Shawn Colvin
"I try never to back away from honesty. Rather than move away from showing it, I want to show it all. I find a weird kind of comfort in showing everything. I don't mind exposing it." - Shawn Colvin
"I try to cut out everything that's superfluous. I'm drawn to making music that's close to the bone." - Shawn Colvin
"I was an extrovert and I have the kind of ego that needs to be satisfied rather immediately. I was a ham-I did a lot of theatre and liked being seen by people-I liked applause and being a performer." - Shawn Colvin
"I wasn't writing and I didn't believe in myself as a writer. I really liked taking other people's material." - Shawn Colvin
"I went in a really pop direction-I was writing amazingly trite, stupid lyrics to really fun little melodies, and that was my idea of what I was trying to do as a songwriter." - Shawn Colvin
"I worked hard at developing a guitar style that felt good and also would work to entertain people over a long period of time all by myself. Something interesting and strong." - Shawn Colvin
"I would say my strength is lyrically. I'm a much more simple writer when it comes to music. I've gotten into a thing lately of trying to write lyrics by free-associating on the rhythm of the phrase that I need." - Shawn Colvin
"I'd written a lot of strange songs when I was a pained adolescent. Basically I was imitating Joni Mitchell and I don't think I had much depth, either musically or lyrically." - Shawn Colvin
"I'm getting married, and the people who love the depressing, confessional kind of stuff go don't get too happy, you know." - Shawn Colvin
"I'm going back to the small folk clubs. I haven't outgrown them yet. For me this is like a little sneak preview of what the possibilities are, what the problems are, what people ask of you, what happens within the dynamics of your group." - Shawn Colvin
"I'm too quick to negate myself as a songwriter... that's part of what's taken so long." - Shawn Colvin
"I've always been a good chameleon-I can really cop another person's vocal thing. I learned a lot of people's guitar styles-obviously, cause that's a good way to learn. But I wasn't endowed with the creative gift, in my opinion." - Shawn Colvin
"I've figured out that the more I do what I feel is right for me, the better I'll be. The compromises I've made, image-wise or musically, have never panned out." - Shawn Colvin
"I've never followed either Survivor. I did watch Temptation Island one time. And I watched the whole show. I think I'd be in trouble if I watched that stuff-I'd probably get into it." - Shawn Colvin
"I've never seen someone fail or miss out who wasn't kind of pushing ahead with the best of intentions and with the belief in themselves." - Shawn Colvin
"I've never written daily unless I've been under complete pressure to do so. I'm a very reluctant writer. I keep vowing to change that, but I don't and I'm in such admiration of people who do." - Shawn Colvin
"If anybody came and accused me of taking advantage of my position and opportunity to put anything I want on an album, I'd have to give 'em an ear, but I'm not sorry I wrote exactly what I wanted to say." - Shawn Colvin
"If it were a total drag, no one would do it. It's a rough way of life but you get to see amazing places under protected circumstances. People want to help you, to tell you what to see, though you don't have much time. You have very little control over where you go." - Shawn Colvin
"If you achieve fame, you should enjoy that every day for about five minutes when you get up in the morning and you realise you have plenty of money and that you're in a good position, and then you go on about your day." - Shawn Colvin
"If you get a groove going and you kind of say nonsense over the groove then some words come out that you couldn't have predicted. Some you keep, some you don't." - Shawn Colvin
"It began of course with Bob Dylan, and that must have been an incredible time; I think everything that's happened since then came from that energy." - Shawn Colvin
"It was just completely nuts to think of what we were doing and make any comparison between that and what was being played on Top 40 radio right then." - Shawn Colvin
"It's kind of fun to take a step back and create something fictional." - Shawn Colvin
"It's tragic when families are like mine, I believe, unhealthy and dishonest within their structure and everybody takes on these roles to try and make the whole thing balance out. It's destructive to everybody." - Shawn Colvin
"My favourite sandwich filling? Turkey and mustard!" - Shawn Colvin
"My motto is stick with what you know. I didn't have it in me to paint fictional pictures. I didn't have the skill to make an interesting story, and I don't know that I do now." - Shawn Colvin
"My records haven't sold millions, so as far as where I make my demands I've sort of bent toward the musical side of things. I can put my foot down real hard there. When it comes to marketing it wears me out." - Shawn Colvin
"Not every project can go smooth, but in the end, you just have to trust your standards." - Shawn Colvin
"One of the dumber things my manager said was, Stick to the melody. But I can't." - Shawn Colvin
"Some songs I would just go way overboard on the emotion and then I'd have to rein it back in to make it accessible." - Shawn Colvin
"The folk tag gets a little annoying. That came out of New York right around the time of Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, the neo-folk, new folk, whatever they started to call it. You had an acoustic guitar and that's what you were." - Shawn Colvin
"The music that's affected me the most always stood up to repeated listening, and there was usually something interesting going on in the production." - Shawn Colvin
"There was a phase when I first moved to New York in 1981 when it had just gone over the top with people like Steve Forbert, The Roches and Carolyn Moss." - Shawn Colvin
"There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed." - Shawn Colvin
"There were coffee-houses and there was a hang-out in a church that we used to go on Saturday nights when I was in high school; a few of us would always bring the guitars and I was kind of the resident entertainer." - Shawn Colvin
"There's a lot of desolation and pain and crisis being dealt with in my songs. But I do think, in writing about desolation, you're getting past it, too. And there lies the hope." - Shawn Colvin
"There's always artistically-minded people that you will gravitate towards and who contribute to what you're doing." - Shawn Colvin
"There's nothing quite like making a piece of something where there was nothing. Yet when you get up and play it and give it to people and you do a good job, that's pretty great." - Shawn Colvin
"There's only one song that I still feel funny about playing. I feel like it's maybe taking it a little too far, and that's Monopoly. I wrote it in 10 minutes and said exactly what I wanted to say. It makes me feel vulnerable." - Shawn Colvin
"There's tons left to do. I want to be a producer. There are not many prominent women producers. You know, there's your top ten list of producers and they're all men." - Shawn Colvin
"They're all in their 20s so they're called alternative and I'm in my 30s so I'm called folk. I don't wave a flag for any type of music." - Shawn Colvin
"Up until Sunny Came Home and another song from that record, The Facts About Jimmy, I never wrote about a character before. It was always first person." - Shawn Colvin
"What's great about art is that if you can reach people, if they hear or see what you do and it moves them, there's a commonality. People tell me they get a lot of hope out of what I do." - Shawn Colvin
"When Suzanne Vega played a couple of places with 6,000 people I was dying of jealousy, because it was a real rock thing. A lot of places are very prim and people sit there very respectfully, and then we played a couple of places where people were wild." - Shawn Colvin
"When you're slaving and sweating and you finish writing a song, that's good for a couple of days' bliss and then you're back to hell again with the next idea!" - Shawn Colvin
"Without music, I could not get through." - Shawn Colvin
"You get thrown together with a group of people that you didn't necessarily pick to be your friends and you have to live with them. It's a great challenge and it's always interesting; it has its ups and downs." - Shawn Colvin
"You go get your picture taken and you go through 10 million rolls of film. I don't find it deplorable, but it's just a little too polished as far as I'm concerned." - Shawn Colvin
