There's so much about Dolly Parton that every female artist should look to, whether it's reading her quotes or reading her interviews or going to one of her live shows. She's been such an amazing example to every female songwriter out there.

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, 'Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we'll talk.'

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it's so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

I love to write honest songs that name real people, then get up onstage and live out those emotions in front of 15,000 people.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I'm really not worth being called an artist at all.

We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it's not going to do anything for you.