"I consider myself as a singer first, but something that really helped me come into my own is that there's not a separation between me singing and me playing the guitar. The two fed off the other"
About this Quote
Colvin is pushing back on the tidy filing system we use for musicians: singer over here, guitarist over there, “real” songwriter somewhere in the middle. Her point is less about proficiency than about identity. Calling herself “a singer first” nods to the way audiences and industry gatekeepers tend to label her, but the real claim lands in the next beat: she didn’t fully arrive until the guitar stopped being accompaniment and became part of her voice.
The subtext is bodily. Singing and playing aren’t two skills she happens to possess; they’re one feedback loop. The guitar isn’t decoration or virtuoso flexing, it’s a steering wheel for phrasing, dynamics, even confidence. When she says “the two fed off the other,” she’s describing a creative system where rhythm changes the way a lyric is delivered, and a vocal impulse changes the way the hand hits the strings. That’s how a performance stops sounding like a “singer with a guitar” and starts sounding like a single instrument making decisions in real time.
Context matters: Colvin emerged from the late-80s/90s singer-songwriter ecosystem where authenticity was policed and gendered, and “just strumming” could be dismissed as lightweight. This line quietly rejects that hierarchy. Integration is her coming-of-age story: not learning a new trick, but refusing the split between expression and technique. The payoff is artistic authority, earned not through louder gestures, but through tighter alignment between what she feels and what the room hears.
The subtext is bodily. Singing and playing aren’t two skills she happens to possess; they’re one feedback loop. The guitar isn’t decoration or virtuoso flexing, it’s a steering wheel for phrasing, dynamics, even confidence. When she says “the two fed off the other,” she’s describing a creative system where rhythm changes the way a lyric is delivered, and a vocal impulse changes the way the hand hits the strings. That’s how a performance stops sounding like a “singer with a guitar” and starts sounding like a single instrument making decisions in real time.
Context matters: Colvin emerged from the late-80s/90s singer-songwriter ecosystem where authenticity was policed and gendered, and “just strumming” could be dismissed as lightweight. This line quietly rejects that hierarchy. Integration is her coming-of-age story: not learning a new trick, but refusing the split between expression and technique. The payoff is artistic authority, earned not through louder gestures, but through tighter alignment between what she feels and what the room hears.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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