Bonnie McKee Quotations

I started writing my own songs from the time I was a little kid. I would write my own lyrics to other people's songs that I heard on the radio and take whatever song and make it about fairies and angels - whatever little girls sing about.

When I moved to Seattle in fourth grade, I joined the Seattle Girls' Choir. It's a world-class choir, and we competed, toured Europe, and went and sang at the Vatican, so it was a really awesome experience to have that young.

I've been singing since I could talk, pretty much. My dad was really musical and taught me how to sing harmonies and got me a karaoke machine with tape decks.

I like to think of myself as the people's pop star a little bit. I respect Lady Gaga so much, and I love what she does, but she has this kind of mysterious, out-of-reach thing. I'm just not that - as much as I'd love to have that sort of mystique, I think I'm kind of an open book.

I think what it means to be an 'American Girl,' and what I wrote the song about, is our freedoms. The idea that we as Americans can be what we want to be and say what we want to say and that we take it for granted.

I was always super, super musical. So my parents recognized that and put me in choirs, piano lessons, and all that.

I've always had a teenage thread running through my music.

If I know I will be working with someone and they are not keen with writing with a girl, I like to be non-threatening and cool so they will trust me. It's a thought process of who work and how I want to present myself.

There are some artists that don't like working with other females, which is fine. They have their own thing. I personally love being surrounded by other females.

I saw Tina Turner do 'Proud Mary' on TV, and it was so electrifying and such a unique experience. I remember crying out of excitement, and I knew that I wanted to be a performer and make people feel excited and moved, and that's why I gravitated towards it.

I like to go to the movies at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery. They do this thing in The Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood where everybody sits out on the grass and they project movies and it's very romantic and very old-school Hollywood, so I love that.

Maybe I'd like to be a little more than friends with Ryan Gosling, but I'd just like to hang out occasionally.

I've always felt my spirit animal was a Tiger, so it's funny that now in 'Roar' with Katy Perry - which is a song we write together - there's the line: "I got the eye of the Tiger..." So I feel like there's a little bit of me in there.

I got called to write for Aerosmith, nothing ever came of it, but I ended up spending the day with Steven Tyler and going to his house and we sat down at the piano, just me and him, and he sang for me and played, then he asked me to sing for him, and then we sang harmony together. That was just a big moment where it was like 'oh my god, my life is crazy!' It was really cool.

I think one day I'd like to win an Oscar.

I'd like to go the Cher route and act and sing and write and have a TV show and do it all.

I just want to give people something to dance to, and something to cry to, and laugh to and fall in love to.

As long as I can reach somebody, then I feel like I'm doing my job.

I started writing songs when I was a little kid actually. I wrote a song about Catwoman and I wrote a song about Leprechauns, as a little kid.

I think the difference between a good song and a great song is... honestly, I think the lyrics, because if you have a really solid melody and solid track and everything is there but then the lyric is just okay, then you've got a good song.

If you can take it to the next level and really tell an interesting story in a unique and fresh way, then I feel like that's a great song.

It's really liberating and fun to be writing stuff for myself, and really have the freedom to say what I want to say and not really have to think about what somebody else is going to say or have to edit myself to speak from someone else's vision.

I have a reoccurring dream that I'm in the ocean in New Zealand and everything is completely upside down, because it's on the other side of the planet.

It's just funny that anybody would care at all to take apart the words that I write. It's kind of cool!

I had an epiphany where I realised that there are song titles everywhere - in advertising, in conversations with people at the grocery store - and every time I open my mind to that and find titles, I then weave a story around that.

I love really kitschy bad movies. Showgirls is one of my favorites. I saw House of Versace and died. I'm a big fan of made-for-TV movies because those are instant classics, naturally.

I'm a really visual artist, and I love writing treatments for music videos, photo shoots, fashion, and all the visual parts that go along with making an album.

I've been close friends with Katy since teenagers, before she was Katy Perry. She's always been a great resource for me to pull from and watch - from her choice of how public she wants to be about her personal life on down. I also watched her develop from the coffee-house singer-songwriter I knew to her be to playing arenas and killing it.

No matter what, I always have expensive designer shoes. It's all about the shoes for me.

I was writing songs as a kid about leprechauns and Catwoman and teapots - whatever it is that little girls wanna sing about. The first song I wrote was called "Kitten." It was about a boy named Liam, who I was just crazy about.

It's nice to really have the freedom to write what I want.

When I go and write with other artists - a lot of the time it's with them - it's like a therapy session almost. I ask them what they're listening to and what they're going through and what their influences are and I try to get inside of their head and step into their shoes for a second.

When I write for myself, I just get to be myself.

I think I've learnt a lot about bullying and how to deal with bullying and how to get over that and to just be yourself and forget the haters.

Ke$ha is super talented and super fun and always down to party - I love that girl.

I love writing with Adam Lambert. He's really funny and very fun, he's a great friend.

Obviously I love writing with Katy [Pery], I feel like we're the same person when we write together. Even though we fight a lot, we fight over every line and we pull each other's hair and we cat-fight all the time, it's always worth it in the end.

A lot of people, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and a lot of people have written for other people, and of course Bruno Mars. So I think it's a great way to break into the industry and show people what you can do and show them your talent and people tend to listen a little differently to your own music as an artist, when you've proven yourself as a good songwriter for other artists.

Every time I work with Dr. Luke I learn something new. He's kind of like the Andy Warhol of pop music, where he mass produces his art but it always still has heart and always still has an emotional thread to it. I think he's really a genius and I'm so lucky to have gotten to work with him.

Sometimes I write a song and I'm down with it but I'm like yeah, whatever, and then everybody loves it and then it blows up. I'm like: "Okay! I didn't see that coming."

There's a feeling that you get when you write songs where... it feels like it's destined to do something. Then sometimes you get that feeling with a song and it never goes anywhere, that happens all the time too, so you never really know.

I am a little crazy but when I'm on-stage, then I really get to play it up and perform and be over the top and it's like an outlet. It's fun to 'wild' out.

In real life I'm pretty easy going and pretty chill, I'm not the party girl who will go wild and crazy necessarily.

I tend to get a little quirkier and crazier with my lyrics and come from a different angle when I'm writing for myself.

In my head, I wanted to be Madonna, but the music I was writing on paper was not what you'd choreograph dancers in costumes to. It was more coffee-house stuff.

Cheating is bad. That's a big mistake I've made, and I've really hurt people. I've never lied about it, though. I've always been honest.