Yuna

“Sometimes I have a melody in my head; sometimes it's just a verse. I read lines from a book or movies that I watch and grab a few quotes and start writing on paper. From there, I record a really rough version and work on the song.”

“When I first started in Malaysia, having a Muslim Malay girl singing and holding a guitar was new to everyone. Even Muslims there had issues with it; they found it weird.”

“Being a musician, it's my job to be real and be true to whoever I am. Hopefully that will inspire other people. I hope it inspires people to be themselves and be comfortable in your own skin.”

“The fashion world is so interesting because it's always changing, but if you know yourself really well, despite of all the changes in the fashion trends, you know how to stay true to yourself.”

“When I got signed to the 'Fader' Label, they got really excited about having me as their new artist. They were promoting my music everywhere. Pharrell was one of the producers who wanted to work with me, so I was really lucky to be one of those people who got to work with him.”

“It's like with feminism. We talk a lot about feminism meaning complete freedom, and for some people, that means, like, 'Free the nipple!' But there's another end of the feminist spectrum, and that's where people like me are.”

“I enjoy fashion and taking the effort to present myself well, and I'm glad that a lot of people refer to me as a 'Hijabster'. I'm not the greatest fan of the term, but I think girls everywhere should be confident in their own skin and be inspired to look and feel good inside and out.”

“I really believed that my songs were good enough for the whole world to listen to. I had fans from America or the U.K. who would be like, 'Oh my God, I love your music'.”

“Whenever I Google for clothes, I always look at what Angelina Jolie is wearing. I love Sienna Miller, and I really like Rihanna's style, too. There's the edgy girl, classy girl, and the Bohemian chic girl. I guess I'm all of that combined into one.”

“In Malaysia, we have a lot of divas, like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey singers. And they were all so so talented, just very talented. For example, there's this one jazz singer, her name is Sheila Majid, and I was always singing her songs.”

“Once in a while, I write in Malay and work on something fun that's more for the local Malaysian market, and when that happens, it's always something really special; it speaks volumes that I'm doing it for my fans who have been there for me since day one.”

“I grew up listening to a lot of Malaysian pop music, which is kind of like a mixture of traditional and pop... I was also listening to a lot of English music as well.”

“You learn so much about yourself as an artist. I never would have thought that I could sing every night, you know? Travel and perform every single night, and travel to another city the next day and do it all over again? You learn a lot of new things about yourself, and you make a lot of connections with people.”

“Embrace the color of your skin and your own beauty.”

“I think feminism is that you just have to stick it all out. I remember this one time when someone interviewed me, and I was young, and they said, 'Do you see yourself as a feminist?' And I was like, 'I don't know. I'm not really comfortable calling myself a feminist.'”

“Sometimes when you're a songwriter, you kind of have this egotistic thing: you just want to write something that you love, and you don't care about if people like it or not, but personally, I want to write something that people can jive to.”

“I love traveling. I've been doing it since I was 16.”

“I use the 'Too Faced Chocolate Bar Eye Shadow' Palette every day. I've tried a bunch of stuff, but this is my favorite. For eyebrows, I use the 'Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow' Pomade in Dark Brown, and for mascara, I don't use anything else but 'Urban Decay Perversion' Mascara.”

“I think, from the very beginning, I always knew that I needed to get out of Malaysia and do my thing somewhere else.”