I decided to do some outside material once for an album. I stated getting some songs pitched to me. And I would get cardboard boxes full of cassette tapes. Every one of them stated out with crying. I said "Is this all we [women] do? Cry?"... And I thought, "Oh this is really, really boring.". But as it got younger, you know, it's about the cute boys.

If I were writing at 20, I would have written entirely differently, because you see life entirely differently. But as an almost 50 year old, it's different. It's sexual but not quite so in-your-face. It's a different deal. For me to get up there and say "I'm going to wear long fingernails and hair extensions and show a lot of skin, an then I'll sing about crying"... that wouldn't have worked. I just sang what I felt at the time.

Writing is the key to all this success for me.

It's always interesting to see how people perceive you. I was perceived as being very sexual. I think in the beginning, and that's just a big hoot: "Who me?"

I write songs the way I think women think today.