Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/featur...

You were looking for someone else to sing it?We tried. Labels were like, "We love this, but what do you expect us to do with it?" But L.A. [Reid, head of Epic] was the first one to say, "Who's singing it? Go find that voice." I met his A&R guy Paul Pontius and I sang for him. A week later, I was in L.A. and I texted him, "Wanna get some coffee?" I was just making up stuff to get his attention. He was like, "Wanna play for L.A. Reid tomorrow?" All I had was my ukelele. I was so nervous, but L.A. was doing the shoo-wop-wops and dancing with me. Then they made me wait in the conference room for 20 minutes with no cell phone, and I almost killed myself. I thought I had screwed up my whole career. Finally he came back and said, "We got you a record deal, girl!" That was one of my goals. Even if I wasn't a pop star, I wanted to at least say I got a record deal and I got dropped.