Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had this instinct and I just knew it. It was a very strange thing and as soon as I finished recording it, we were all in the studio saying we have something really special here.
There was a lot of creative energy that I had, that I feel wasn't understood, and I think that whole world for me felt like another family, another place where I could feel heard.
I always want to bring emotion across in a straightforward way. I don't want to get histrionic when I'm singing. For me that's just not interesting; it goes too far down one road.
The older you get, the more you realize you're drifting toward a direction, and sometimes your significant other drifts into an opposite direction. You can't blame anybody for it.
I always loved books. I don't remember learning to read, it was just something I always did. I was hungry for knowledge, I guess, and information; I was a curious kid. I still am.
I also wanted to make a record that was about other things than romance, yeah, after two years on the road singing all the songs from the first album, I got kind of tired of that.
I'd love to work with Pharrell, but it's annoying because everyone is working with him now, and you don't want to be like, 'Oh, I want to work with you, too.' But he is the dream.
When you spend two to three years working on an album that I feel very happy with the end result, there is nothing I would change. Musically, I have achieved what I set out to do.
That's the moment I learned that the more you believe in yourself, the stronger the vibration touches someone else, and things begin to happen the way you dreamed that they would.
I love singing, so I want to see how far I can take it. I love the challenge, and I won't be happy until I have a wall full of gold discs and seven huge world tours under my belt.
I spent my whole teenage life trying to get to London and go to dance school, but when I got there, I couldn't wait to get to the clubs on weekends. I knew I wanted to make music.
No one knows for sure if you can inherit a stammer, and so I worry that my baby might. It's why I want to work on my speech before he arrives. I don't want him to hear me stammer.
That's really the whole point of art - it's to take something commonplace and draw people on a path so that, all of a sudden, they have a new impression of everything around them.
I save all the energy until I get on the stage and then I have a burst of energy and look like I've been jamming all day long. But other than that, I'm a granddad, great granddad.
I think doing shows with other R&B artists like myself brings the attention to the crowd. You can't just do those one artist shows anymore. I don't like just me being on the show.
I know music is just powerful in itself and to have someone say the words that I sat down and wrote changed their life or made them feel a certain way, that hits something in you.
The challenge is always as a writer, is this going to work, because it's a very intimate process, and I tend to be very introverted and insular, and when I write, it's in my head.
The genuiness of our worship cannot be measured in decibels of sound, and although it is vital that we express our love for God vocally, He looks to see the evidence in our lives.
In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.
I thought that I was going to be like this earth mother. When people would complain about being pregnant, I was like, 'What are you talking about? It's incredible! Just enjoy it.'
And the look on her face as she opened the door Was like an old joke told by a friend. It'd taken ten more years but she'd found her smile And I watched the corners start to bend.
Meeting Stevie Wonder was a massive, lifetime achievement for me. He's one of the sweetest people. I sense a kindred spirit in him, and I hope he'd say the same. Actually, he did.
My mother always wanted to be in show business, but her parents discouraged her. So when I started performing for the mirror she enrolled me in dancing, singing and piano lessons.
It got to a point of where it was ruining my health and I just hated it. I hated doing it and I couldn't stop without some kind of help to get the longing for it out of my system.
In some songs, like propaganda songs-and don't get me wrong, I love some propaganda songs. They're some of my favorite songs in the world. It's just that I don't enjoy writing it.
It seemed like there was no control over it. I think certain things just popped. God was blessing us in telling us that certain things were going the way they were supposed to go.
We are in the entertainment business. This should be fun. We are musicians; we don't save lives. We shouldn't... we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously or be revered that much.
I think one of the reasons musicians keep doing what they do and writers keep doing what they do, is that we're totally unsuited for anything else. And I for one am much too lazy.
A lot of people make records where there are a couple songs worth listening to and you skip through the rest, and I don't want to do that because those records bore me pretty bad.
I get my most creative energy after a show, so I love to go back to the hotel and compose new material. I generally do it in a rush. I have to get it out, otherwise I can't sleep.
Whenever there's a camera in my face, that's when I feel vulnerable, and then it turns into a little bit of being self-conscious, which I think is the worst kind of vulnerability.
I've asked to go back into theaters and smaller venues because to me, in smaller venues I can really demonstrate my commitment to quality. Theaters are great containers for music.
Sometimes the tide is just out. But it always comes back in again. In times of severe distress, we tend to get tunnel vision and think this feeling will last forever. It will not.
It's those changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes nothing remains quite the same. With all of our running and all of our cunning, if we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.
It's big production. It's huge. It's using studio technology to your benefit. You don't go in and play live and then just take the tapes and get them mastered. You have to create.
I think it's not enough for us to extend the hand of love. I think it's important that that goes both ways. It's important also that we look at policies we need to change as well.
I just want my music to measure up to. Part of it's just thinking about my place in history and how this music is going to be perceived, if it's listened to 30, 40 years from now.
It's a loser's emblem (swastika), because the Nazis lost the war. It's ridiculous to suggest we are involved with fascists. All my best friends are black, gay, Irish or criminals.
I've been asked over the years to compile a list of desert-island discs. I couldn't do that. If I was trapped on a desert island, I don't think I'd want 10 songs to bring with me.
We gotta figure out a way to pay our teachers more. They're like surrogate parents away from home. They have such a huge responsibility and they're underappreciated and underpaid.
I think it's almost a law of nature that there are only certain things that hit an emotive space, and that's what was always special for me about music: it made me feel something.
The Brits was an amazing place to get a broad musical education. But I never really thought I was going to be a singer because there was always someone better than me in my class.
When I was younger I dreamt of intrepid travel and whenever I had some time off I wanted to scuba dive. Nowadays I'm a bit more relaxed but I'd still like to do an Amazonian trek.
It was an hour and a half plane ride, so I slept. I try to sleep because that's probably the only time I get to get my real sleep. When I can't sleep I read books or watch movies.
I'm very attached to Paris because I have a base there and am also recording there, but New York is home to me when I'm in the U.S., because it's nice to have a bed to go back to.
So usually even if you like a sentence or a story or something, it won't come out that way - it'll come out years later, and in a different way, and you don't really control that.
I think the sophomore curse happens when you change every bit of yourself. Though my hair is blonde now, sonically it's still the same girl; conceptually it's still the same girl.
I do feel like there are the pop stars of the world and then I'm like their dirty little sister, running around with sh*t on my face in combat boots because I can't walk in heels.
My parents had a love for music. There were so many records, so much music constantly being played. My mother played piano, my father sang, and we were always surrounded in music.
I don't go out that much anymore, unfortunately. I used to enjoy it, but I'm just so busy. Like last night, everybody else went out, and I just went straight home and went to bed.