Norah Jones first rose to fame in the early ’00s with her debut album, Come Away with Me. Since then, she has excelled in the jazz community, experimented with her sound more than many of her peers, and become a highly regarded songwriter. Few artists have made the world of jazz more accessible than Jones.
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In celebration of Jones’ lauded career, check out 15 of her best quotes below.
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1. “All is fair in love and songwriting.”
2. “In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That’s where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing.”
3. “A lot of pop people out there are cool, but they overdo it.”
4. “I’ve been told the weirdest things: ‘Yeah, I love taking a bath to your music!’ or ‘I gave birth to my daughter while listening to your music.'”
5. “I became a musician so I wouldn’t have to get up at 6 in the morning.”
6. “When something’s ending, you go through so many phases, and it can be frustrating. But once you’re out on the other side, it’s like you can really see all the crazy phases you went through.”
7. “On the first album I was saying, ‘That’s just one part of me.’ And then I was thinking, ‘Well, am I going to hide the rest of me now just because I’m afraid of something?’ No. I’m just going to be myself.”
8. “Without a piano, I don’t know how to stand, don’t know what to do with my hands.”
9. “Nobody can tell you you’re wrong for writing a song about how you feel–even if you don’t really feel that way.”
10. “The pop world is cool, but I never really thought of myself as part of it or wanting to be a part of it because I’m on a label that’s not really like that. They’re not trying to dress me up, they’re not trying to do things like that. I feel like I’m sort of separate from that, actually.”
11. “Songs are about whatever you want them to be about. For me, it might mean something completely different than what it means to you. So I’d say it’s about whatever the listener thinks it’s about.”
12. “I think it’s important for people who love music to retain physical CDs or even vinyl because it sounds so great and so much warmer than music over the internet.”
13. “God bless Ray Charles. It was such an honor to meet him and sing with him and actually just to watch him sing from just two feet away.”
14. “I feel like I’ve been lucky because I don’t feel like I’ve ever tried to be somebody I’m not. People might disagree.”
15. “Success and the art of making music are two different things for me.”
(Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
