Latest Nellie McKay Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Precocious and eccentric are okay. But I think that people in the arts represent something integral and kind of secretive in everybody else. So the reason people like some artists is because they're saying or doing something that they would like to do or say, but they don't have the balls or the means. People are really afraid to put their ass on the line. Just to put your face on a poster and put your name in big print and say "Come see me," that takes some cojones, you know? Ambition is nothing to be ashamed of.

  Nellie McKay

  Art, Ambition, Mean

  Source: www.avclub.com

• There are so many people that do things better than I do: dancing, singing like a black girl, singing country. Or if, while they sing, they move their arms in and around their crotch; when I sing, I play the piano and look like a little choirgirl. I'd like to mix it up like that.

  Nellie McKay

  Girl, Country, Moving

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm getting offers for movie stuff. But it shows how facile the movie industry is. I mean, they don't know I can act. I guess they like my record and think I have a nice complexion? I don't know. How many people work and wait tables to get that break? I really don't feel entitled. Everything's so corrupt, you know? Especially the tastemakers. I trust the American public much more than the tastemakers.

  Nellie McKay

  Nice, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Just like everything, even the most fun and creative endeavor requires work to be successful, and I'm so sick of working. I'm a lazy person at heart. I never meant to be a go-getter.

  Nellie McKay

  Fun, Heart, Successful

  Source: www.avclub.com

• As long as you have imagination, you never need to work. You never get bored. You could just walk around and go to museums and check out new movies. You could be busy in New York city for 10,000 years.

  Nellie McKay

  Long, Imagination, Bored

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm just kind of sick of music. I don't know what I want to do. It's not that I feel suicidal or anything, but I just want to end this life. I just want to be somebody else now. Sometimes I feel like that. You always think, "If I just cut my hair really short and dye it brown and put on a little goatee, no one would know it was me, and I could..."

  Nellie McKay

  Suicidal, Cutting, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I was never pop-music taken seriously when I was taught. But some people who agree with you will like your music, and some who don't agree with you will like your music. I think that if you can approach things in a universal fashion and speak rationally about things, then most people do have similar intrinsic values. They don't - or at least they feel that they shouldn't - want other people to suffer. They want a good life for them and their own.

  Nellie McKay

  Fashion, Good Life, Taken

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I feel like you should always be questioning the genre you're doing. If you're doing something that sounds like a lullaby, it can be good to make it about someone stalking someone.

  Nellie McKay

  Like You, Stalking, Questioning

  Source: www.avclub.com

• You have to reflect honestly what's around you in your music. I think a lot of people are just obsessed with their own relationships, so that is an honest reflection of what they see. A lot of people don't go much deeper than that.

  Nellie McKay

  Reflection, Thinking, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

• While a lot of my day, like most people's, is spent thinking about me, I can see how it's a universal thing: the competition, the clashes of personality that fuel the world and fill the world, are the exact same ones that take place just between two people. I just think politics is a form, en masse, of human relations.

  Nellie McKay

  Thinking, People, Personality

  Source: www.avclub.com

• In terms of content, a lot of rap is crap, with all the sexism and homophobic bullshit. It's incredible how rappers are always preaching nonconformity - you know, "I'm just gonna go my own way and be my own man and blah blah blah" - but they're the first ones to do so many things that they have to do. They have to do that hip-hop thing, a certain way of walking, and it's so conformist.

  Nellie McKay

  Rap, Men, Bullshit

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I do think there's a great deal of politics mixed in rap. Their reference to the real world is much better than most, particularly a lot of women who seem like all they do is sing about love. Love is such a fleeting emotion. It's such a small part of the things you do in your life. I don't understand why that's all they concentrate on, except that that's what they're encouraged to do, because if you keep thinking about love, you'll be less of a challenge. I like that about rap. It's got power to it.

  Nellie McKay

  Real, Rap, Love You

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I don't listen to much rap, really. I can rarely listen to a whole record of it, because musically, it's very formulaic, and oftentimes it doesn't have the best hooks on every track. I like my music to be very musical.

  Nellie McKay

  Rap, Track, Musical

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I think people at most record labels really like music, but it's hard because everything is so subjective, and everyone's so creative in their own right.

  Nellie McKay

  Thinking, People, Creative

  Source: www.avclub.com

• What people generally tell you is, "We'll all agree," and then once you sign, they expect to get their own way. I think it was a bit of a surprise that I was still very headstrong even after signing. I wasn't so happy to get a deal that I would agree to anything. In fact, I disagreed on most things and got my way on most things, which I think was to all of our benefit. But they wanted the record to come out, and I wanted the record to come out, so we had to work together.

  Nellie McKay

  Thinking, People, Working Together

  Source: www.avclub.com

• It was not very hard to do a double album. Nobody thinks it's a good idea if you're an unknown singer-songwriter. But I just kind of feel like if I want something, I can get it. That's the good side of being American, or something, you know?

  Nellie McKay

  Thinking, Kind

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'd been knocking on record companies' doors for so long, and I had gone on a lot of auditions. It's weird when you go to those auditions through the Village Voice or something. You never know what to expect. You just press Floor 3 on the elevator and pray that it's not... You know, anyone can place an ad, so it's really freaky.

  Nellie McKay

  Long, Praying, Freaky

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm glad I got a record contract, because all of a sudden everything you were doing before that made you a stupid person now makes you a smart person.

  Nellie McKay

  Smart, Stupid, Glad

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I was in school for jazz voice, which is the dumbest way to spend $35,000 a year. I just felt like a rip-off of good jazz singers. I didn't feel like I was being anything special, and I always wanted to be special. It's like you know you have something inside you that's gonna make you different than everybody else and make you somebody in this life, but you wish you could figure out what it is, because at most things, you're either mediocre or really, really bad.

  Nellie McKay

  School, Special, Wish

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If you're dissatisfied anywhere, New York is the place to be. If you're unhappy at college in Topeka, I don't know what there is to distract yourself with, you know? So anyway, I distracted myself until I decided that the distraction could be a school in and of itself.

  Nellie McKay

  School, College, Unhappy

  Source: www.avclub.com

• In the hierarchy of instruments, if you're a harpist, you're considered someone with a brain much more than if you're a singer. Even though singers, particularly singers who can play piano... If you go to the office of career development, you can get a gig much easier. Still, musicians tend to look down on you. I think they've got some nerve, because if they could sing, they would do it, but most of them can't.

  Nellie McKay

  Thinking, Office, Brain

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I was approaching adolescence. For some reason, I guess my mother thought it would be less crazy out in the suburbs, which it wasn't. I just think adolescence is hard for anyone.

  Nellie McKay

  Mother, Crazy, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I got sent off to my grandmother's for five months and watched a lot of TV and had a lot of grilled cheese with butter on it - because she was English and put lots of butter on everything - and yogurt. The English are big on dairy products, you know? I'd have an earache, and she'd be like, "Here, have some milk." Wonderful woman, but she had kind of screwed-up nutrition ideas.

  Nellie McKay

  Nutrition, Kind, Wonderful

  Source: www.avclub.com