Congrats on your win! Did you come in trying to make it to the end or did you just want to have fun with it and see what happens?
I think it's both. It is a competition, so you think about winning, for sure. But it's art, and it's a show, so you can't control anything. It's not like a race where there literally is a winner. Art is so relative. What moves people is really relative. And this show, you don't see anybody else that you're up against anyway, so you can only just do your best. And so, I really just tried to focus on the things that were within my control, which are my own skills and my own performances.
Why did you want to go on The Masked Singer?
First and foremost is practicality, which might sound like a weird answer, but I'm a single mom and I'm a musician and it's very hard for female musicians to be moms. It's not an industry that's very kind to moms. We're always on the road, we're touring, we're promoting. And so being a mom — much less a single mom — as a musician really takes some work. I've been mentoring a lot of younger girls or even girls my age that are just starting to have kids [who are] like, "How do you do this? How do you have something you love — our music is such a passion — and our kids, which we love, and how do you make that work?"
But an opportunity like this, it's so high profile, so public, but doesn't take a lot of time is a really perfect fit for somebody like me. And then what I found interesting about the show is that it was very authentically me, even though a fake accent, nobody knew my name, I felt like I got to share my myself so sincerely. I really believe that having heart in the world is the most important thing and championing my own heart and other people's hearts and making people feel more than being perfect, so I got to stand for all those things that are so essentially me because of the costume and because of the nature of the show.
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Is your son a fan of the show?
Yeah, he loves the show. He thinks it's so fun. He loved the hamster. He hated to see the hamster [Rob Schneider] go. And it's just fun to include him in the process and designing the costume and all that.
How did he help you design the costume?
He just sort of saw me doing it. I'm a visual artist as well and I've been working on a sculpture of a heart with this eye that looked like a shark, kind of like your heart is breaking open with this light coming out of it. So when I decided to do the show, I wanted the costume to be based on that artwork. My son saw my sculpture originally and then he saw me sketching a costume to give to the show, and then as we worked on it, so he got to really see the process.
What was it like moving around as Queen of Hearts?
It was just top-heavy. It wasn't too hot, which is nice. My visibility was bad. I was really surprised. I couldn't see 20 feet in front of me and I couldn't see from the bridge of my nose down. So I couldn't see where the edge of the stage was or where the middle of anything was. They had to put lights on the back wall of the building so that I could tell where the middle of the stage was, so that was really disorienting.
What went into the decision-making process when picking songs?
I just picked songs I was a fan of. I loved "La Vie En Rose." I never learned it, but I've loved the song. Same with Patsy Cline's "She's Got You." And from a writing aspect, those two songs are so perfectly written. It was fun for me, in that short period of time, to get to go from country to pop to 1930s, and really cover the gamut.
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Why did you decide to release an album of the songs you performed on The Masked Singer?
I loved singing these songs so much that I wanted to record them. I really enjoyed doing it. Like I said, I think these are some of the best songs ever written, and even the more current songs like "Born This Way" or "Firework." I think they're beautifully written and it was really fun singing them. And I worked so hard on the arrangements with the music producer that I wanted to make a new album.
You also have your own new album, your first in seven years, coming out next year. What can fans expect from that?
I always made myself a promise that my No. 1 job was to learn how to be happy, and my No. 2 job was to be a musician. This job's really difficult. That's why a lot of people end up drug addicts or kill themselves or have mental breakdowns. So I've always taken a lot of time between records and just made records when I felt like it. And I finally got that itch again. I definitely wanted to push myself to do something new, so this is a style I haven't really done. It's definitely a pop album. A goal was to push myself vocally, to write more for my voice and to show myself as a singer in a different way, without sacrificing story and lyrics, so I loved doing this record. As I looked at my career, I was like, oh gosh, I've never really shown what a good singer I am. And I wanted to remedy that. And so, that was part of writing the album and one of the really fun things about doing the show.
