Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I write songs I write for myself...I'm writing it as a form of expression, and hoping to find an audience, an audience that responds to music that is honest and lyrical and tells stories.
I'm right here right now and I want now to be the Golden Age ...if only each generation would realize that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive ... the time to flower is now.
New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city.
I sang 'O Holy Night' with the Vatican orchestra, but also a Blake - a lullaby that William Blake wrote for the Christ child, and I set it to music, and the Vatican orchestra played the music.
New York is a great city. There is no question of that. It's such a diverse city. I've walked down the city and heard four or five different languages simultaneously. I think that's beautiful.
From the age of 12, I had an understanding that singing was something I loved to do more than anything, and I did say to myself, 'Why not?' But there were definitely some doubts along the way.
A lot of my creative projects are inspired and driven by technology and style. My mission is to recycle as much plastic possible in my lifetime and beyond in the form of high quality products.
Every year since I was very small, my family - Mum, Dad, sister Charlie-Ann and brother Stephen - and I have been holidaying in Carvoeiro in the Algarve, so that has very fond memories for me.
I'm not entangled in a bunch of lawsuits and a web that I can't get out of. I can hold my head up... a happily married man who has his head in order. There isn't a bunch of scandal in my life.
The fact that I'm shouting that I have Gangnam style makes people crack up. Imagine if Brad Pitt was singing the song - would it be funny? A twist is important when it comes to writing lyrics.
In my life, I wanted to feel tall. I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be tall as the Sears Tower. I wanted to be on top of the Sears Tower. I wanted to be as strong as the Sears Tower feels.
There's a darkness that everyone must face, it wants to take what's good and fair and lay it all to waste. And that darkness covers everything in sight, until it meets a single point of light.
You always have guilt as a working mum, and you overcompensate by buying them loads of things. That was what I was doing, anyway. I've kind of realised now that I'm the best mum that I can be.
Saying that you don’t have time to improve your thoughts and your life is like saying you don’t have time to stop for gas because you’re too busy driving. Eventually it will catch up with you.
I don't think there's any way it could have failed. We don't know failure in this band. We didn't know failure. We got to know it a little after awhile but at that time there was no such word.
I have deliberately kept singing because I have to at my age. If I stopped for even a year my voice would slowly deteriorate until it's not there at all. That's a fact about getting to my age.
I admire them [latinos] for making their way up and opening new opportunities for other Latin newcomers. Latinos have come a long way and the roles and opportunities just seem to be improving.
I don't think I've ever gone on stage to be an asshole. I know one thing, from the past, and that's that my intentions always began in a pure way. I really want to just try and play the songs.
People are so used to having their lives filmed, they're not even conscious of having cameras around. I still have that sort of suspicion when a camera comes out. I view it as a thing to fear.
Love songs in particular are so compelling because love is probably the strongest emotion you can have, and I think it's relatable to absolutely everyone, whether it's unrequited love or love.
My proudest moment of my career was opening night in Cambridge and watching the cast take their curtain call. No one was looking at me, and I was floating off the ground. It was just euphoric.
When I was younger, I was listening to a lot of Armenian music, you know, revolutionary music about freedom and protest. In the 70s I was listening to soul and the Bee Gees and ABBA, and funk.
One day, someone said to me, 'Do you want to go jump out of an airplane?' I felt like I had nothing to lose anymore, so I said, 'Why not?' And every day since then, I ask myself that question.
I think there are times in a lot of people's pasts where they've unintentionally fallen in love with really damaged people. You go out with someone who's a mess so you can feel less of a mess.
My favorite bands are Hank Williams Jr. and Led Zeppelin. When it's rock, it's '70s rock, and when it's country, it's '70s country. For me, it's the grit and dirt of music that I love so much.
There's a weighing kind of overemphasis on sexuality, which disempowers music generally, because it silences all the other voices; it makes music a very powerless force for changing the world.
Every pore of you is crying and you don't even understand why or what. I actually kind of died and got born again as a result of taking the meds and having a chance to, you know, build a life.
The Lilith Fair thing was Bummer Town - hey, hop aboard the marginalizing train. I guess you had people come out of that and have careers, but I think there was a pretty intense backlash, too.
If you have to fight a crowd of boys, it's best to go for the biggest one. That way you won't have to fight them all. The others will see that you mean business and you will win their respect.
The bass and drums are the engine, and the key to good bass playing is it's not what you play, it's what you DON'T play that counts. You leave the spaces, they're more important than anything.
Aledo will always be home to me because I spent the first 27 years of my life there - it's such a special place - and because of the experiences I had there, I've become the person I am today.
I think the first thing you should know is that nobody in country music 'made it' the same way. It's all different. There's no blueprint for success, and sometimes you just have to work at it.
I tried playing electric for awhile and it just didn't work out. My reflexes are centered on the six string acoustic. I just played the electric too hard and it sounded awful, so I gave it up.
Style to me is incidental. The British are very adept at creating it for its own sake, but the best style is incidental. John Coltrane had a style but it was totally incidental to what he was.
Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine, we can become zombie-like and shut down. It's about discipline. You have to push yourself.
Everyone is looking for connections between the songs. I don't usually approach a record as a concept. There's no overriding theme I'm trying to represent. It's all about the individual songs.
I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!
It's easy to get lost in the shuffle, and just enticing people to hear the music for free doesn't mean that much when everyone else is essentially doing the same thing on MySpace, or wherever.
I think one of the reasons that I love the fans that have stuck around, because I really enjoy writing different kinds of songs. I don't know if I write them well or not, but I can write them.
One day, when we were coming back from school, we saw this big cloud of smoke coming up, and all these fire-trucks in the yard. The garage was burning down. I was 14, and we'd lost everything.
I've always listened to jazz or folk or blues. I was always listening to the prophets. I don't really go for...I don't know how to say anything about the singles scene without slamming people.
God has blessed you richly, so get down on your knees and thank him. Don’t forget the less fortunate or God will personally kick your ass. I’d love to do it for him, but I can’t be everywhere.
The fashion world is so interesting because it's always changing, but if you know yourself really well, despite of all the changes in the fashion trends, you know how to stay true to yourself.
How terrible would it have been if I had come out with some watered-down version of who I am? People fell in love with the real me, and I still feel blessed that that was how the journey began.
I'm not saying I'll never go solo - never is a long time - but I've always been onstage with someone else. That way, you're in it together, and you can feel, together, when the songs are right.
I just write what I write, produce the music I produce and try to give myself a chance to stay true to the art form. If you try to rein in an art form, it can be hurtful to what you are making.
Relationship doesn’t remain, We resonate on different flames, I could cut you down again, If you were like all other men, If you were like all other men, I know that I could shut you down again
You're not getting the b-level tunes. Our most recent producer, Danger Mouse, was quite sure about that. So you're getting the best of the best, the cream of the cream of what we have to offer.
I don't take drugs nor drink since 2000 and I must say that I don't think about it anymore, although like every person that was addicted and has money - I know that this can lead to temptation.
It's a powerful thing to be able to write a song. Even the least powerful feeling - like insecurity - that makes you feel weak when you experience it, when you write about it, you are powerful.