In finding love, I think it's important to be patient. In being in a relationship, I think it's important to be honest, to communicate, to respect and trust, and to strive to give more than you take.
If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.
In college, I faced an interesting problem. I wanted to play music all the time and yet I wasn't ready for anyone to hear it. To remedy this, I took to retreating to stairwells as a safe place to sing and write music. It was there that I wrote most of my songs in college and really grew into an artist.
In finding love, I think it's important to be patient. In being in a relationship, I think it's important to be honest, to communicate, to respect and trust, and to strive to give more than you take. As for heartbreak. . .there's no easy way out, but it's important to remember that even though everything feels awful now, it will get better, you will meet someone else, and in the meantime, you can continue to grow and learn and live life surrounded by people that love you.
I'm kind of feeling like I don't mind being open with the random details of my life, like I'm at a coffee shop or my toe hurts or something, but obviously other more personal areas of life where I will just never really go there.
I'm really into good nutrition and keeping healthy! That said, I'm also addicted to candy - It's my biggest weakness.
I've loved singing since forever. Whether it was with my sisters while cleaning the kitchen, putting shows on for my stuffed animals, writing songs about my stuffed animals, starting an a capella group with my cousins while on vacation, or awkwardly singing along to karaoke tracks alone in my bedroom - singing always found a way into my life.
However, it [singing] wasn't until halfway through high school that it dawned on me that singing wasn't just a hobby, it was something I had a growing need for in my life, and that was about when I adopted the neglected guitar I found under our piano and started singing about all the things I could never say.
I went into college undeclared. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew that music was obviously this central big important thing in my life that I was gonna keep doing.
I started teaching myself guitar because I loved singing so much. Then one day kind of out of the blue I found I was writing a song. It just happened organically.
Ever since I was really really little, I was just singing all the time. Like one of my favorite games when I was little would be to just have one of my sisters pick a title, and I would impromptu create that song.
Being hapa, or more specifically, half-Japanese half-Euro mutt (English, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, French, Welsh, German. . .in case you were wondering), has definitely helped shape who I am. It's very cool to get to identify and learn about all these unique cultures and I think it's helped put the world in perspective.
The first video I ever made, announcing 'Crash the Super Bowl,' I did about fifty takes and I wanted to die. It was awful.
Not only am I putting music out there, I'm giving part of myself away.
My two sisters and I sang all the time. Whenever we cleaned the kitchen, we sang in three-part harmony.
Since I don't feel like I belong solely to any one of them I find that it makes me even more interested and open to other cultures as well. It's also fun looking ethnically ambiguous because no one can quite put a finger on what I am and it's very entertaining to me!
My dream artists to collaborate with are probably Cee Lo Green and Imogen Heap. They're completely out of my genre but they're both musical geniuses.
Making a video is one of the most exciting things for artists and fans. It's like a payoff.
If you're looking to make a basic living selling and playing your music, the Internet is all you really need.
I posted a video a day for almost two months and was hardly sleeping, but I think it really pushed me to give music everything I had in me. I knew it was a chance I couldn't miss. The funny thing is I never saw my music video when it aired during the Super Bowl because as soon as I heard my song start I was in tears for the next 10 minutes! The most amazing thing that came out of all of this, however, was the support that had developed online. Without the people that came back day after day to vote for me, I'd be nowhere, and I really owe it all to them.
I want to encourage people to make healthy life choices, whether it's training for a half-marathon, or eating more vegetables.
I think a lot of singer-songwriters get compared to each other, but I'd like to think that what I'm doing is special and specific to me.
I get to travel around the world and meet all of these amazing people, and they're singing my songs! And to me, that's crazy.
I don't have any rock star demeanor to me. I just can't pull that off.
The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn't quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made.
