Shawn Colvin Quotes

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Shawn Colvin

Profession : Artist

Birth : January 10, 1958

I consider myself as a singer first, but something that really helped me come into my own is that there's not a separation between me singing and me playing the guitar. The two fed off the other.

Shawn Colvin

I don't support Trump. We'll put that right out there.

Shawn Colvin

I've had a prolonged adolescence, like a lot of my generation.

Shawn Colvin

Cynicism is tough. A cynic's point of view is really pitiful. I derive pleasure out of a lot of things in life. As long as I'm fairly healthy, it's hard to stay dismal for very long.

Shawn Colvin

I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.

Shawn Colvin

I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.

Shawn Colvin

One of the dumber things my manager said was, Stick to the melody. But I can't.

Shawn Colvin

There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.

Shawn Colvin

I'd like to think I've overcome. I was not a person that was supposed to survive New York City, that was ever going to write my own songs or have children.

Shawn Colvin

With my songs, the question is always, 'Can you pull it off live, alone on just an acoustic guitar?' That's the litmus test. If I can, then it's a song I ought to record. If I can't, it's probably not good enough.

Shawn Colvin

When you know part of the industry thinks of you as a one-hit wonder, that's painful.

Shawn Colvin

For a long time, I felt like I failed myself, my career, and my record company.

Shawn Colvin

It was a beauty contest in the '80s. If they played two women back to back on the radio, it was almost a scandal.

Shawn Colvin

When I became sober, I was 27 and struggling as an artist.

Shawn Colvin

As a kid, I was depressed and riddled with anxiety. The bottom dropped out when I was 19.

Shawn Colvin

My music is basically perceived as folk or softer rock.

Shawn Colvin

When I made 'A Few Small Repairs' and it did well, I followed that up with having a baby, and that was not received well at my record company. I was written off, and that had a bearing on my career.

Shawn Colvin

Put me in a room with a songwriter, and I just clam up. I get shy.

Shawn Colvin

I would say my whole first record, 'Steady On,' had a lot to do with healing.

Shawn Colvin

When you get into recovery, you have to relearn a lot of perceptions, attitudes, and self-awareness if you want to stay clean. You really do change.

Shawn Colvin