00:00I think what's so cool about this song really is the depth of what it says is so kind of deep.
00:06It's dressed up in this little punky, weird, quirky music.
00:10And it's the first song I wrote and I was like, that's the first single.
00:12And I think that everybody felt like,
00:14you're a little bit out of your mind because that's not really what we were thinking your
00:18solo record was going to sound like.
00:20They were hoping I was going to be like a little more, I don't know, consumable.
00:24For me, it was like plain and clear.
00:27I don't care if it doesn't even get on the radio.
00:30This is the song that starts this journey because this is the truth.
00:39This was a really special time in my life.
00:42After being in No Doubt all those years and having the opportunity to play
00:47and not have to think about any limits, I felt like in my mind I was doing a dance
00:52record that wouldn't really count.
00:53It was just going to be my guilty pleasure, something I could do.
00:56No one would judge me.
00:58It was just for fun.
00:59And I think that freedom was super exciting for me at that point in my life.
01:04And when I went in to write this song, it was the first song I wrote outside of the band.
01:09And I was working with Linda Perry and she was, at that time, on top of the world.
01:13She had just done Christina's song, Beautiful.
01:16She was the big it writer to write with.
01:19I didn't even know about writers.
01:20I was just in my band.
01:21I didn't even know there was these fancy writers you could go write with.
01:24And I remember I got in the room with her.
01:25I was being really insecure.
01:27I was like, I want to do this, but I don't know how to do this.
01:30Like, what?
01:31And she just looked at me.
01:32She goes, what are you waiting for?
01:34I hopped on the mic and it was like, like I get it, it's okay, I love it.
01:38It was just, boop.
01:48I wanted to do something that felt very theatrical, with zero limits.
01:53So the idea of setting the tone of what was happening, which was there was a guilt behind
01:59the fact that I was going and leaving my band behind.
02:03Something I never thought I could, would do.
02:05And in that moment, I just wanted to recognize that that was an amazing thing.
02:10But here we go to the next chapter.
02:17Everything about time has always been on my mind a lot.
02:22And I write about that.
02:23This was like 20 years ago.
02:24And I'm writing about, worried about my time's going to run out.
02:27My time's going to run out.
02:28I just kind of was inspired by the idea of this rabbit hole.
02:32I was going to dive in and just like Alice in Wonderland, anything was going to happen.
02:37I feel like growing up in Orange County, Disneyland, that was the backdrop of my childhood.
02:43Those fantasy worlds were really ingrained in me.
02:47I was trying to express what it felt like to be emotionally held back by my guilt of
02:53leaving the band to do something else.
02:55I couldn't stop myself.
02:57I needed to do it.
02:58I think that that was a perfect way to describe the way I felt, which is like, if a cat's
03:03in heat, you can't really stop them from going outside.
03:06They'll just growl and go.
03:08And they hate being in the car, and they hate being stuck.
03:13I think I felt like I just was bursting with this music in me, and I knew I needed to go
03:18get it.
03:19And that was a perfect way to describe it.
03:29I was definitely having an inner dialogue.
03:31It was like, no, you need to do this.
03:33But wait, what if they say that you're trying to climb and everyone's going to judge you?
03:38You're trying to be like a whatever.
03:40Everyone's going to judge you like you're trying to be like a solo star.
03:44You're in a band.
03:45It was definitely an inner voice.
03:47It was definitely a dialogue that I was having just out loud for everyone to hear.
04:01There was just something in me that knew that there was more if I could just be free.
04:05I just needed to grow up a little bit, you know what I mean?
04:08I had done what I had done for a long, long, long, long time before anyone ever saw it.
04:13It was just time.
04:20Listen, guys, what inspired Take A Chance, You Stupid Ho?
04:24Well, I think at that time in the early 2000s, that was a really common way that we would
04:30kind of love each other, especially girl to girl.
04:34If you saw your girls, it was common language to be like, what's up, ho?
04:38It was like dissing at the same time, but loving at the same time.
04:41I'm saying it in a loving way.
04:43And I think I kind of was saying that to myself.
04:45Don't be a dummy.
04:47Get yourself together.
04:48Take a chance, you stupid ho, like in a loving hug kind of way.
04:51You can do this.
04:53I don't know where the born to blossom, bloom to perish came from.
04:58Such a beautiful metaphor to life and how I felt as a woman.
05:02At that point, I don't remember how old I was, but I was in my 30s and I felt old and
05:08I felt like I had already blossomed.
05:10How could anyone care about me anymore?
05:12This is what I was.
05:12I'm not gonna lie.
05:13I was just a woman.
05:14I was a woman.
05:15I was a woman.
05:15I was a woman.
05:16I was a woman.
05:17I was a woman.
05:17I was a woman.
05:18I was a woman.
05:19I was a woman.
05:19I was a woman.
05:20I was a woman.
05:20I was a woman.
05:21I was a woman.
05:21I was a woman.
05:22This is what happens to us as we grow older.
05:25We don't know it until we're there, what it's gonna feel like.
05:28Where did that come from?
05:29Because I couldn't think of something that beautiful, right?
05:31So I always just say that was, again, a miracle.
05:35And you know that lyric has been tattooed on so many people.
05:39That's the one tattoo that I approve of.
05:41I was like, yeah, wherever you want it, tattoo it.
05:44It's so beautiful.
05:52It was like I was in my 30s and you start to really start feeling it.
05:59Like you're like, wow, what is 30?
06:01That's crazy.
06:02Like you just feel like it's gonna be over.
06:04Even though now I'm forwarded into the future again.
06:07And that looked like I was so young.
06:09And everybody will say the same thing because that's just life.
06:12We're going through life.
06:13It's a test at the whole time.
06:15I just wanted to explain like to myself, just because you're a female
06:20and you have this outer version of you that's temporary and always going to be changing.
06:26Like you're still alive.
06:28Like you still need to exist.
06:29You still need to produce things.
06:30You still need to have a place.
06:32And sometimes I think that in society, you can feel like they just want to put you out
06:37into the pasture like you're done.
06:39So I think that inner voice was like me trying to convince myself like, you're still hot.
06:43You can still do this.
06:44And it's really just an inner dialogue looking around me and what I felt like at that time.
06:51Look at your watch now.
06:52You're still a super hot female.
06:55You got your million dollar contract.
06:57And they're all waiting for your hot track.
06:59I'm going back and forth between like we all do to ourselves.
07:02Like you're disgusting.
07:03And then the other side, it's like, actually, no, it's too bad.
07:06Like if you get the right lighting, like it's fine.
07:08Like, you know, we lie to ourselves all day long.
07:10And it's just such a unbelievable conversation that we have in our minds.
07:15Looking at that conversation and putting it into the microphone.
07:18Because the way that we wrote this was like, we would just go on the mic and just like freestyle.
07:23I would go back home and sort of pick it all out with these weird melodies that we came
07:28up with together.
07:29And so I was just struggling with the confidence to be able to say, I want to do this so bad.
07:34But then that devil creature is like trying to like take me down.
07:40I rebuked the devil.
07:42And I'm going to ride off into the sunset and write this music.
07:46And that's what I did.
07:49What you waiting for?
07:51What you waiting for?
07:53What are you waiting for?
07:55What you waiting for was the line that Linda Perry said to me.
07:59And she was very clear.
08:00It was very simple.
08:01She kind of slapped me and woke me up.
08:04Like, stop getting in your own way and just be free and do your thing that you're going to do.
08:08Sometimes you just get in your own way.
08:10You make up all these fake roadblocks of why you're not good enough.
08:13And if you just receive the gift and you use it, it will come through you.
08:16And that's exactly what happened.
08:20I can't wait to go back and do Japan.
08:23Get myself some brand new fans.
08:25Osaka, Tokyo.
08:29You Harajuku girls.
08:30Damn, you've got the wicked style.
08:32When I was a little girl, my dad actually worked for a company called Yamaha Motorcycles,
08:36which is a Japanese company.
08:38So it was a big deal.
08:39Every day at dinner time, he would talk about these crazy meetings he would have.
08:43You could imagine back then, we didn't have internets or nothing like phones.
08:47We just had encyclopedia or National Geographic.
08:53If you wanted to learn about another culture, it was very foreign.
08:56And he would come home from these really long trips to Japan.
09:00And it would be like two, three weeks, and he would open the suitcase and it would be like,
09:03oh my gosh, I got a geisha doll.
09:05I got a Hello Kitty and things that we couldn't get here that were just so different and so beautiful.
09:11And so my fascination with the culture was something that came from a very, very young age.
09:17And he would go and tell me, like, you would freak out.
09:20There's this area called Harajuku where everybody dresses up.
09:23There's Elvis's.
09:24There's this.
09:24He would tell me all the details.
09:26And this was like 15 years before I ever even got to go to Japan,
09:29which I never in my lifetime thought I'd get to go.
09:32And so when I got to go to Japan in the 90s and I landed and I went to Harajuku,
09:37the place I had heard about, I just was like a kid in a candy store.
09:40I was like, oh my gosh, this is it.
09:41I've been told about this my whole life.
09:43Like, this is insane.
09:44So for me, it was just like a weird full circle thing.
09:47And when I wrote that line, it was like me telling myself, well,
09:51if you do this, you're going to get a treat.
09:53You're going to get to go back there again.
09:57You look back on it and you think, wow, like it was kind of ahead of its time in a weird way
10:02because I feel like now people are discovering that song for what it really is.
10:06What's getting in your way?
10:07It's actually a self-anthem, you know,
10:09and a way to like talk yourself into whatever you need to do next in your life.
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