Caroline Polachek

“Low' was probably the album that influenced me more than any other, because of how it combined humor and impressive, glamorous, driving energy with this totally surreal soundscape production.”

“But I studied art in Belgium from the age of 17 to 18, and I learned French when I was there. Very reluctantly so. I didn't do a very good job. For the first six months I was very depressed and couldn't speak to anyone, and then it kinda hits you.”

“Well, I'm just a really sentimental person, and I just get leveled by things so easily, like from films, to personal interactions, to memories, to music.”

“And a pang is ultimately private. It's not a thing that gets broadcast to the world; it's a kind of internal alarm that sounds when something has to change and it has to change fast.”

“I've definitely been in that situation many times - staying in a relationship longer than I should. I think there's so much of your identity that comes from a relationship.”

“Music feels so environmental to me, especially the process of working with synths or mixing. I started thinking about music as a psychological landscape as well. It's a landscape of the mind.”

“I kind of think that's the best way to operate; even when I'm in sessions writing with other artists, I'm always pulling from the kind of emotions that are the most raw in my own life and offering them up in the studio.”

“My first concert was Third Eye Blind.”

“Panging is the kind of sharp pain you feel inside when you're reminded of some kind of unattended need or something that you've neglected.”

“Well working by yourself, especially when no one knows about it, is totally liberating because it's very impulse-driven. You work when you want to work. You work when you can work. No deadlines. No conversation. No compromise. No help.”

“I actually don't live anywhere. I live on the road.”

“In New York, if you spend a few hours doing nothing, you feel like the whole world passed you by.”

“I was into music from a very early age, and I was also - I don't really talk about this that much - really into horses. I learned a lot about rhythm and about voice from that.”

“I would love to live in Japan again, but would need to really commit to learning the language before doing it. Both my parents speak Japanese fluently, so I suppose it would feel like a tradition.”

“I was born in New York, but I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut - that's where I went to school. I remember begging my way into choir in the 3rd grade, because you're not supposed to get in until 4th grade.”

“I think women are taught in the music industry that once you're 35, you've expired, and I'm here to prove that factually incorrect.”

“When I came up in a band - not just in a band, but a kind of underground DIY community - there was such a clear cut distinction between what pop was and what not pop was in very simplistic terms.”

“I want to keep different options for different futures open all the time.”

“I would enjoy seeing anyone else sing 'Caroline Shut Up.' That would be interesting. I would give that one away, actually, which is funny, even though it's very personal.”

“You'll see every kind of New Yorker in there. You really feel like you're in the belly of the beast when you're in Union Square.”