#452: Sia — The Alchemy of Blockbuster Songs, Billions of Views, and the Face You’ve Never Seen

[Being a] celebrity is this huge gaping pain. It's a huge disappointment. For those of you who are listening who want to be famous, just do something else. It's not what you think it is. It's toxic.

Meditation is just a practice. It's nothing fancy. It's just breathing. If you could just breathe and feel the air going in your nose and out your nose, and count to ten, and be present with that feeling of the air touching your nostrils... That's a practice. And then, if you have a thought, that's okay ... When you realize [you're having a thought], just go, 'Oh, whoops!' and go back to one, and start counting from one again.

I do believe now that pop music is really just indoctrination, which is sad because ...music used to be good.

20 minutes of co-regulation with someone that you trust and that trusts you ... 20 minutes of conversation with them will make you not want to do a drug, smoke a cigarette, gamble, have sex, [watch] porn, shop—it's the cure to addiction. It's connection. 20 minutes of co-regulation with a person that you trust—that's the solution.

The best way to make money in music if you're going to be a musician is to write the music.

In the first 10 months of your life, you are basically told who you are and what to experience in the world and how to behave and how to respond in any situation. It all happens in the first 10 months of your life based on the care that you're given.

As we grow, we develop these strategies that happen in the first 10 months of our life. Based on the care that we're given, we develop 1 of 5 strategies ... The strategies are dismissive, preoccupied, careful avoidant—which is now called disorganized—unresolved, and secure.

A good producer these days will make thirty [or] forty grand for producing a song ... Producing a song means putting all of the sounds in it—all of the piano sounds, and then there'll be a violin sound or the sound of the bass and the beat. That's called production.