20 Quotes by Ashley Monroe

That can definitely mess with your music - if you overthink. 'What's radio going to think?' or 'What are these people going to think?'

When my dad passed, there's a lot of sadness right below the surface, and I think there will be until the day I die. So, writing sad songs helps it. And when I sing them, it's pure therapy for me.

When I sing, I go somewhere else. Every time after I sing, I'll ask, 'Did I do OK?' Because I feel like it's like my soul squeezing out of my vocal chords. I don't sit there and think about 'I'm gonna do this next...' I just sing. I sing from my heart, and my heart's got a little lonesome in it.

To just get in front of different kinds of audiences is important for me. I do think it's important for music to be a big family. Whether it's country or not.

What's the point of a song if you can't be honest?

Roy Acuff's from Maynardville, and that's where a lot of my family's from. So he's, I've been told, a distant cousin, as well.

Once you get everything out of your head about what everybody else is going to think, will radio play it - and I hope they do, I really do - once you shed all of that and just be who you are, that's who I am. That's taken a lot of growing up. I've come into myself musically and as a woman, and I hope to keep growing. If you don't grow, you die.

The core of me is country. It's what I love. It's what I write. Even when I sing pop stuff, I'm still singing it 'countrily.'

I love music so much. I've got something going all the time. I've gotta be singing. I've gotta be creating music, or I'm not happy.