That unflinching honesty — about love, loss, ambition, and sacrifice — has always been part of what makes her writing so devastatingly real. In another telling interview, she revealed that her journals, written in telephone book-sized volumes, serve as the raw material for her songs.
The artist during a performance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on August 23, 1994.
She writes prose on the right side of the page, poetry on the left — and when a journal entry has what she calls a “romantic tinge,” it becomes a song. Not romantic as in love-story romantic, but romantic as in: the way air feels on the skin, the way hair moves in the wind, the way trees sound. That kind of thing.
The artist sings while holding a tambourine during the Fleetwood Mac concert at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale on September 23, 1997 in New York.
Her creative well, she insists, has never run dry. “There is no age limit on how good of a writer you can be,” she said. “I hear all these older songwriters go, like, ‘I can’t write love songs anymore.’ And I’m, like, ‘Well, that’s just stupid.’ Because you have memories for days. Go open your memory library and check in there.”
The artist performs at a private show to introduce her then-upcoming release “Trouble in Shangri-la,” her first solo collection since 1994, at SIR Studios on March 31, 2001 in Los Angeles, California.
This year, she has been celebrating the 25th anniversary of her 2001 album “Trouble in Shangri-La” with a national tour, and earlier this month, she made her first-ever appearance at the Met Gala an entrance nobody was going to forget in a hurry.
The artist during the 20th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Dinner at Waldorf Astoria on March 14, 2005 in New York City.
She swept onto the carpet in a custom Zara gown designed by John Galliano: a sweeping midnight blue silk taffeta ballgown with a matching velvet jacket, a crinoline silhouette, and an overlay skirt embroidered with appliqué tulle and chiffon roses.
The artist is seen backstage during the 52nd Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on January 31, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.
