King Princess

“I was like, 'I'm an academic!' I'm not at all. It turns out I'm not great at that.”

“I wrote them kind of consecutively, starting with 'Holy,' and then '1950,' 'Talia,' 'Upper West Side,' 'Make My Bed,' and I was kind of like, 'This is it.' It felt right. It felt complete. It felt like a sentence. I really enjoyed making it.”

“I wrote about ladies who had come through the studio. I get asked, 'Is it a choice to gender the music or put pronouns in?' and for me, it just wasn't a choice.”

“My dad was really a protector and mentor.”

“I think that there are all these amazing figures in our history - the Bowies, the Tina Turners, the Chers, the people who are, in many ways, genderless or represent 'the other' - and I want pop music, and other queer artists - Kehlani, Perfume Genius - these people are bringing queer narratives into people's minds.”

“As a person in the LGBT community, I feel like I've begun to do my job.”

“I think younger women need older women to get where they need to be. I think women turn out the best work in the world.”

“I'll just say I'm lucky. I've got the dopest girl in my corner.”

“It's funny 'cos I think a lot about kids who grow up with their parents being really important members of their fields, and they just go the opposite way.”

“I think the name perfectly encapsulates my soul, and so I get to be myself with the safety of a different name.”

“I think that was my biggest fear - censoring myself and putting myself into a cookie cutter to be representative. But I think what I realised is we don't need that.”

“I spent a lot of time preparing for releasing music and then not a lot of time releasing music.”

“Having a sold-out show takes a lot of the pressure off because I know that it's going to be a room full of people who are excited to be there. The worst part - or the part that I'm adjusting to - is the actual act of traveling. The hotels are pretty trash.”

“Queerness is the lens that I live my life through.”

“I've seen so many beautiful, strong, talented women stifled by male ego in rooms, and I want every young woman who feels that their music is being taken from them to know that they have a voice, and they have the tools, and that it's possible.”

“What I didn't tell her was that I distinctly remember walking out of my junior year English class reading, 'Amandla Stenberg comes out as queer.' She unknowingly set a precedent in my life, a gold standard of how to be proud and exist in the intersectionality of multiple identities that were one thought of as being conflicting.”

“It's time for gay people to be in the industry and talking about their stories.”

“I think it's so funny because straight people just don't think about gender in their songs, or making a statement by talking about love.”

“How I can be an active voice for gay people but also the music industry? This is the art we need right now. This is what we need right now. We're in a renaissance, and we need people to rebel, come forth, and bring messages into art.”

“You're your truest self when you're young, and when somebody says something, and you're like, 'Oh, maybe I'm not normal,' you shut it down. It's always a process to rediscover those parts of yourself.”