Today, the 64-year-old, Seminole, Texas-born songwriter and performer Tanya Tucker is experiencing a resurgence.
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The artist, who rose to fame in the ’70s as a teen country star and went on to fame in the early ’80s, released an album in 2019 called, While I’m Livin’. That LP, which was her first since her 2009 offering, My Turn, was made with the help of Americana star Brandi Carlile.
And it has since put Tucker on the contemporary map yet again after some personal ups and downs.
Even more recently, Tucker’s new documentary, The Return of Tanya Tucker, is out now. Tucker, who recently paid tribute to the late artist Loretta Lynn, also released her newest single, “Ready As I’ll Never Be,” which she produced with Carlile.
But all this career work aside, we wanted to dive into the best quotes from Tucker throughout her life. In other words, what are the musician’s thoughts on life and love, her career, and music, in general?
Without further ado, here are the 23 best quotes from Tanya Tucker.
1. “I don’t know what keeps me going. Sometimes I wonder… I think it’s just pure perseverance and wanting to succeed and having that burning desire to always have success.”
2. “To be believable is the only way that you could be successful.”
3. “Words are not even within me. They’re not in my vocabulary to really express the kind of feeling that I had.”
4. “Well, you know, certain—for one reason, I think that the intervention process is a good process for most people, but for me, it just looked like a bunch of my friends trying to get back at me and sit around taking jabs at me, you know, when I couldn’t defend myself.”
5. “At one point, I didn’t get out of bed for, I think, three months, and I went down to the bottom of the hill one day and I had to call somebody to get me to come back up—come pick me up because I couldn’t physically walk up the hill.”
6. “That’s the era we grew up in. It’s weak to go to a psychiatrist.”
7. “And as long as people want to hear me sing, I don’t know why I’d retire.”
8. “It’s so funny because I listen to songs that I recorded that I didn’t really know anything about at the time. Later on, I’m starting to feel the songs. Sing them first, feel them later.”
9. “I would much rather be a better mother or better human being than I would be a singer. Fortunately for me, singing makes me a living.”
10. “I have an unending desire to be better and make myself a better person, better mother.”
11. “There’s no way to be able to tell what it’s like to be a country singer until you’re walking in the shoes.”
12. “If the Cowboys and Titans ain’t playing, I’m not interested.”
13. “The best thing is being able to perform in front of people and to express my feelings, whatever they may be at the time. Just to be able to make the world a happier place to be.”
14. “He does all research now, but he put me on some medication, Zoloft, and, I tell you what, a lot of people have had pros and cons about it, but it was my wonder drug.”
15. “Everybody has problems.”
16. “By the time I get done with my fans and my music and my kids and my family and my fiance and my horses, well, they suffer too, but, I don’t really have much time left to do anything else.”
17. “Elvis was a big influence to my music, but Loretta Lynn was, as well.”
18. “The more people told me that, you know, wow, you should be so blessed. Don’t you feel blessed? And you have all this—mansion and all these beautiful things. And I said, you know—the more they told me that, the more depressed I got.”
19. “When I was younger, I thought about retiring.”
20. “I don’t think I was really addicted. I used it as a party tool.”
21. “You know, as any parent will say, you know, life happens.”
22. “I’d like to do a Christmas album. I’ve never done a Christmas album.”
23. “We’ve got great fans that rock and roll won’t have, because you can have a one-hit record and country music used to, not so much anymore, and you have a fan forever.”
Credit: Derrek Kupish / Scott Adkins PR
