You’re creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it’s their experience, not yours. I’ll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about ’my’ broken heart.

Krall is describing a performer’s craft: to present a song so listeners can inhabit it as their own story rather than as the singer’s autobiography. By refusing to frame a number as “my broken heart,” she avoids narrowing the song’s emotional range and keeps the focus on shared feeling—heartbreak as a universal experience. The remark also reflects a jazz-and-standards tradition in which singers interpret material written by others; the authority comes from phrasing, tone, and timing, not from confessional backstory. The result is a kind of democratic intimacy: the audience feels personally addressed without being asked to enter the performer’s private life.