Skylar Grey

It's so peaceful, especially being in the industry.

I'm going out and touring and just being in big cities and then coming home to this peaceful, serene ranch life.

A real balance.

Yeah, it's the perfect balance.

Well, and for me, like living in L.A.

really ruined my creativity.

Um, I think a lot of it was like, I'm, I have a tendency to like give everybody too much power.

So like all these so-called experts, like listening to their opinions about what I was doing, um, just got in my head.

And so, um,

Removing myself being able to remove myself from those characters and personalities telling me what they thought I should be doing like writing about singing about dressing whatever I just I Need to like have open spaces to really hear my own inner voice and like my gut, you know um, so I left LA when I was 23 and I moved up to Oregon for a while lived in a cabin and

um well i had i'd been on tour and i was playing keyboards and singing backups for somebody else so i can back up a little bit so i got my first record deal when i was um 18 or something and put out an album that was with uh warner brothers lincoln park signed me um and i was going by the name holly brook at the time that's my first and middle name

And so I put out an album through that and it completely like flopped.

And I went broke.

And you know, LA is so expensive.

And I had spent all my college savings to move out to LA and make demos and everything.

So I had nothing left.

And so then I had taken, for the first time in my life, I had to get some jobs, like not just performing.

So I worked in Barnes and Noble.

I taught gymnastics and I edited porn.

You edited porn?