My dad used to DJ too, so we used to hear music all the time.

There was nothing more I wanted to do than to see my dad react well to my music. I still do. I send him my demos all the time.

My dad was a country musician, so we had David Allan Coe and lots of other country music playing around the house all the time.

Listening to my dad playing guitar along to 'Sleepwalk' by the Shadows was probably the first time I discovered emotion in music.

When I grew up, my dad listened to all that stuff - Neil Young. Floyd. The Doors. The Beatles. Stones. So even now, to this day, it's the music I listen to a lot of the time.

My dad always played a lot of music, so I heard him playing all the time, and then I decided that I wanted to learn to play guitar, so I got an acoustic and started taking lessons. I wanted to be able to shred like Yngwie Malmsteen.

I always loved soul music. My dad was a very religious guy, and we would listen to a lot of gospel and soul music. My college girlfriend introduced me to musicals. She listened to them, so that was the first time I heard 'Dream Girls.'

I've been working in music since I was a little kid. I would do background singing in my dad's studio all the time when I was a kid. I went to label meetings when I was pretty young, and obviously my goal was, like, 'No, we're gonna hold off.'

Growing up, I was definitely surrounded by music all the time. My parents used to always play music; my dad used to have reggae on. I remember walking around with a cassette recorder, and I used to just record the songs I would hear on the radio so I could play it back when I feel like.

One of my dad's friends from the music industry came over to our house one time and heard me sing, and he said, 'She should audition for this role I have!' So I did! It was a movie called 'The Gospel,' which I did when I was five. That was when I was like, 'I want to do this acting thing!'

I think when I was about 12 or 13, my dad started taking me out to the local golf course, and that's the first time I ever hit a golf ball. I picked it up pretty quickly, just kind of monkey-see, monkey-do. But when I was 12, golf was so slow to me. For me, it was basketball, girls and music.

My dad bought a Beatles tape when I was in fifth grade, and that was the first time I ever really - I mean I was into music, but that was the first time it really blew my mind. When I heard the 'Red Compilation,' which wasn't like a proper album, I thought, 'music was more than I had ever thought it was before.'

When I was 12 or 13, my dad taught me a couple of different chords, and once I learned chords, I never learned to read music, but I learned tablature, like a lot of kids do, and I learned songs that had the chords I knew. It took me a long time to understand the upstroke of picking and strumming, but once I did, it all fell into place.

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