Lucy Dacus

“If you can come out from under pain, why wouldn't you? You definitely can. There's no question.”

“I heard during our label-searching that some labels hire statisticians instead of A&R people. They'll reach out to the bands that will statistically perform best monetarily instead of going out to shows and having an opinion on which music is good or bad.”

“I have a huge note on my phone where things just start popping up. It doesn't make that much sense to me at the time, but once a song is finished, I can read into it and figure out who the characters are in my life.”

“Usually, I'll just be walking from my house to somewhere else, and melodies and words will start coming up, and I'll have to run home to write it all down.”

“I was always taught to be grateful, and so the question came early: What is there to be grateful for? Why is life supposed to be so good? That's still a question I try to answer all the time.”

“I've talked with friends about this: when you write about yourself, that's what people connect to. When you write a sermon or a lesson, that may not reach people. I've learned a lot from people who have been writing about themselves.”

“It's important for me to write songs that feel good to sing every night and remind me of my core, truest beliefs.”

“I haven't studied history - I couldn't give a discourse in medieval literature - but I am a personal historian, and I do a lot to take in the histories of the people around me.”

“The media, and how we're taught to read it, has a huge impact on who we become as people.”

“Negativity, in general, is one of the things that holds people back, and you have to see what's holding you back to get away from it.”

“'Night Shift' is the only breakup song I've ever written.”

“My dad plays guitar in the church band, so it's like music as a service. He plays at old-people homes, so that's like music as a gift.”

“It's weird to get asked questions that I don't know the answers to... But I like getting questions I don't know the answer to because maybe it's the first time I've been asked to articulate these things.”

“I guess the point of that song 'Troublemaker, Doppelganger' is trying to navigate the worth of beauty and if it's hurtful or helpful to value beauty. If it's a curse or a blessing. Is that something really negative and morbid, like the hearse, or is it the limousine - a glamorous symbol of enjoying life?”

“I think a lot about my obsessive need to document things and what it's going to mean in the future.”

“Music was always encouraged as a passion and a hobby, but I was never told, 'This should be your job. You write music and record for a living.' It doesn't happen for people.”

“'No Burden' is not necessarily ferocious.”

“My mom is an elementary-school music teacher. For her, music is an educational tool.”

“Being on tour, it's really easy to stop knowing people that you want to know, because you're not sharing experiences; you're not existing in the minor moments of somebody's life.”

“Joan Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking' comes to mind as an example of a piece of media that I really respect and would hope to emulate: just her courage in looking at her husband's death and the attentiveness that she has in how she looks at it, and the unflinching gaze that she communicates from looking into death.”