Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I hope that somewhere in Small Town, U.S.A., a 15-year-old kid looks to me as a role model the way I looked at the Indigo Girls and Elton John as role models.
I've worked with jazz artists, country artists, classical artists, pop artists. I never wanted there to be categories, because when I was a kid there weren't.
I love doing shows. I love rocking shows. I love playing instruments. I love singing. If I can find a way to do that and feed my family, then I'm a happy man.
I have been vegetarian for twelve years. And I have never been seriously ill. Vegetarian food strengthens the immune system. I think that meat makes you sick.
I'm not good at interviews, I'm not good at dancing, I'm not good at looking like I'm having fun. I never will be, I don't think. Unless I go to a life coach.
From the age of 14 to about 20, I bombarded record companies and DJs with my demos. I was desperate to get it out there. Most of the time, I got nothing back.
If I could turn down the noise of my own will and choiceI could hear the truth of my life in a clear voice. I will bow down my head to the wisdom of my heart.
As far as subject matter, I'd say most of the songs aren't that personal to me. I love making up characters and kind of having fun in a different kind of way.
I love going out to clubs. Granted, I don't get hammered or do anything to embarrass myself. I'd call myself wholesome... but it's not like I only drink milk.
After embracing Islam in 1977, I considered the majority of underprivileged dark-skinned people of the so-called Third World brothers and sisters in humanity.
In my career, I've always felt like all great things came at once, and when something goes bad, it always seems that everything else seems to start going bad.
I was never the cool kid in school, and loads of people told me that I was weird, that I dressed uncool and did uncool things, that I was too nice, too happy.
I need to not be scared of not having someone there to back me up. I just need to tackle things on my own. I feel like I have the power in me to make it work.
Even though the album is an endangered species, can we try and make a coherent and good one, even if it's like making a horse and cart at a Nascar conference?
I read the newspaper online. Mostly 'The New York Times.' I'll still buy papers if I'm getting on an airplane or the tour bus, though. I like physical things.
I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.
When I got to the second album, there was an expectation, because we'd sold nearly seven million albums on the first record, that this would do eight or nine.
As a kid, sometimes you have nobody to turn to. I could always go back to some of the sermons and talk to myself in a righteous manner and put that in a song.
Would you like to play With the thought of a friend In a distant passing stage While you lie around With your hands up and out So resigned you will fall down.
I'm kind of a quirky dresser usually. Like today, I'm actually pretty put together, but I dress kind of off sometimes, but that's just part of my personality.
I feel very warm towards Mum and Dad for giving us the independence they did. My childhood, and the fact we didn't have a TV, gave me a boundless imagination.
Tell me I have to be somewhere, and I'll be there 20 minutes early and stay there longer than anybody else. You hold up a lot of people if you're not on time.
You can't just will your dreams to come true. You have to work hard. You have to give 'em wings, arms, legs...whatever it takes to make your dreams come true.
So I started chanting when I was nineteen, which was about twelve years ago, and it really had a huge impact on my outlook, happiness, and general creativity.
I played Joseph in 'Joseph & The Technicolor Dreamcoat,' which was a bit silly because I am a girl. I wanted to be the narrator, but I had fun with it anyway.
I'm reading Sebastian Faulks's 'Birdsong' at the moment. I read it when I was younger but decided to re-read it, as I remembered really liking it at the time.
I'd like a male to listen to my music and find it kind of fascinating, what a girl goes through when they get heartbroken or get sad or get hurt by something.
And I agreed with that, and I couldn't wait to change my name anyway, because I'm not too fond of the name of Reginald. It's a very kind of '50s English name.
Country taught me how to sing, it put me on a path. But I was never going to be locked into a formula. I don't want to be considered a current country artist.
See, I don't like places where people can't dance - don't like clubs or theatres where a bunch of bourgeois people sit around tip, tip, tipping their fingers.
You hit a guitar, you hit a note, you hit a drum, you hit an organ. Meat and potatoes. Simplicity. Not getting too caught up in little tweezers of perfection.
You're an enormous sponge and everything goes in there and you squeeze it out in songs, I guess. And if you're a painter, you squeeze them out on to a canvas.
If I had a kid, and I had a choice between teaching somebody how to avoid trouble, or teaching them how to get out of it, I'd teach them how to get out of it.
I have always wanted a solo career, deep in the darkest pit of myself, but I didn't dare admit it to myself even. It took me a long time to confront my fears.
A show isn't just a show, a show is entertainment; it's modeling, acting, singing and dancing all ripped into one, with the little time that we have to do it.
You've got a new Spanish-language album out now ["90 Millas," released in September of 2007], and the single ["No Llores"] is #1 on the Billboard Latin chart.
I know that people think of me in terms of Latin music and that's wonderful, that's my heritage, that's who I am, but there's so much more to me and my music.
It was really amazing. I mean, he'd never mentioned that he played in the symphony, like serious violin playing, not fiddle playing. And he just blew us away.
It's interesting to watch where music is going next. Isn't it always rotating? It is so weird how disposable pop music is, even mine. It just goes by so fast.
I love what Eric Church is doing. He and I are friends, and he opened some shows for us a few years ago and I would fly him home on the jet. He is a good one.
I enjoy punk, the attitude as well as the music, but I don't feel like I have to be a carbon copy of it and invite all this controversy, just to be punk rock.
In the very beginning I tried to actualise way too many ideas. The end result was not as healthy a ratio for satisfaction as the current, more mysterious one.
Living in the U.K., there is no way to know whether anyone in India likes my music, but I was surprised to see people singing along while I performed in Pune.
Every mountain needs someone to climb it, Every ocean needs someone to dive in, Every dream needs someone to wish it, Every adventure needs someone to live it
I've been aware of the time passing by they say in the end it's the wink of an eye and when the morning light comes streaming in you'll get up and do it again
I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.
Romance is when after two people have gone through thick and thin together, and have confirmed to become a love that will never change no matter what happens.
There never seems to be enough hours in the day. At the moment I have no time to make new music because I've been doing so much promotion for this new single.
I know just enough Japanese to get by if I get lost and greet an audience properly, just from having a lot of Japanese friends and being there over the years.
Our shows are packed with laughter and light-hearted songs to lift the listener from their everyday life. We encourage the audience to participate in any way.