Oh, stuff the critics. I don’t care. Too many people are snooty about classical. Look, I wasn’t brought up in a home where we listened to classical music. It was a singing teacher that thought it would be best for my voice. Then I moved into crossover. And if that makes the music accessible to more people, then great.

In this remark Jenkins pushes back against gatekeeping in “classical” culture and defends her identity as a crossover singer. She frames her career not as a calculated dilution of high art but as an outgrowth of personal circumstance: she did not grow up immersed in classical listening, and her entry into the repertoire came through vocal training rather than inherited taste. The quote also articulates a populist aesthetic—art’s value increases when it reaches more people—and treats critical disapproval as less important than audience connection. Implicitly, she challenges the idea that accessibility and seriousness are incompatible, positioning crossover as a bridge rather than a betrayal.