I'm the youngest of five girls, and I don't know about you, but it's really hard to be heard when you have five women. I've always been this loud and over the top as a person because I just want to be heard.

My current mantra is that sometimes we need teachers in our lives. I never had that in my life, parents and stuff like that; I tried to stay on the outside of them or anybody that had that kind of influence.

One thing I've tried to never do is make wish lists. I try to have a very steppingstone mentality about this whole thing, where as soon as you make one step you visualize the next step, not five steps ahead.

It's human nature to not say everything that's on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We're afraid of being embarrassed.

One thing, parents: you need to realize is you've got to stop letting artists raise your kids. You're the parent. Why don't you monitor what your child wears? Ariana Grande didn't sign on to be a role model.

Bartending was definitely crazy and fun, because you got to meet so many different people. Unlike people I worked with, I did not date a lot of men that I met while I was working - it's just not what you do.

The word 'confession,' to me, means needing to be absolved. I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not asking people to understand. I'd like to think that I tell stories and sometimes my life weaves through it.

It's the emotion...each word has got a connotation and symbolism and the thing is finding what's behind the word-what meaning it has and what emotion. I'm really into vocal repetition as a definite art form.

And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know.

Music is amazing. There's some metaphysical comfort where it allows you to be isolated and alone while telling you that you are not alone... truly, the only cure for sadness is to share it with someone else.

People have given me the freedom and believe in me enough to say if I want to do these things that I will find a way to make it work. I don't know if they think I'm crazy, drug damaged or just an old weirdo.

A lot of country music is sad. I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times. It applies to music. Three chords and the truth - that’s what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.

A lot of country music is sad. I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times. It applies to music. Three chords and the truth - that's what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.

A lot of the songs are based on my previous relationship. It didn't work out. I lost him, and it ruined me. I had to learn to get back on my feet. I used that heartbreak to create something really beautiful.

I find it quite difficult to think that there's, you know, about 20 million people listening to my album that I wrote very selfishly to get over a breakup. I didn't write it being that it's going to be a hit.

I was a huge fan of 'Mad' magazine when I was 11, 12, 13 years old. I'd scour used bookstores trying to find back issues, and I'd wait at the newsstand for a new issue to come out. My life revolved around it.

Looking for approval or blaming others or feeling like a victim. Whenever I feel myself doing that I try to stop and see myself as someone who's a creator in more ways than just what the word typically means.

When I was first learning songs, I'd have a favorite song, and I'd take the chords and twist them around. I'd learn the chords and then play them backward. That was my first experimenting with writing a song.

I wanted to act when I was young. When I was 12, I asked the head of English at my school, 'Can I audition?' and he said, 'What would we want you for?' And I remember going, 'Oh yeah. Why would they want me?'

When I'm outside gardening, it can be so inspiring. I think of words and melodies. It's peaceful. Every singer-songwriter should find something outside of music that makes them as happy as gardening makes me.

People used to make records, as in the record of an event, the event of people playing music in a room, and now everything's cross-marketing, its about sunglasses and shoes, or guns and drugs that you choose.

When I do things that don't feel pure or make any moves that I don't feel like represent me or who I am, it makes me feel like I wanna throw up. So I just do me, and I guess people just take that how they do.

I come from nowhere Brooklyn, New York. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. These days Williamsburg is kind of a hip area, but when I grew up there, the taxi drivers wouldn't even go over the bridge, it was so dangerous.

There was a report that used to come out back in those days, I don't know if it was the Gavin Report or something like that. And they said, no matter what McGuire comes out with next, we're not gonna play it.

I think music naturally wants to be played with more than one person. There's a surprise element, and you don't know what it will be, and it's up to that other person's energy to help create this third thing.

I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things.

I really worshipped Mama Cass a lot. Mama Cass, who was really fat and she didn't lose weight. Yeah, she went on diets but for the most part of her life and the better part of her career she was a big person.

i'm back at my cliff still throwing things off i listen to the sounds they make on their way down i follow him with my eyes 'till they crash imagine what my body would sound like slamming against those rocks.

A lot of people felt I was getting work because I was Boy George. My response at the time was that there's a lot of DJs making records, they're not all making good records, but they have the right to do that.

I've read and heard that some of the most inspiring vocal interpreters adhere habitually to one rule: Always think the lyrics as you're singing them, so that the sentiment is always appropriate and heartfelt.

As I've gotten older, now I've really got to back that up with record sales. Anytime showed me that I could still have some of those elements I wanted, but you still have to come with hit after hit after hit.

People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and sunshine and so on...like 'California Girls' which was a hymn to youth.

I had a teacher's degree and a degree in Oriental Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts. I thought I was going to India to study but all of a sudden, I had a career in music. It really surprised me.

Maybe some people may have thought or imagined that Islam drains all creativity. In fact, when you look at history, you discover that the golden age of Spain is what actually produced what we call the guitar.

Since I was 12 or 13, I have been taking movie meetings finding a project right for me because I wanted to try it. Craig gave us the script - it was set in Wales, it is really British humour. I just loved it.

I try to keep the idea that there's an audience in as little space in my mind as possible, but you can't erase it entirely, the idea that when you're sitting down to write a song, people are going to hear it.

I think there are some songs that stand the test of time better than others for sure. I think some songs go out of favour; I'll get sick of a song for a while, and I won't play it; then it'll make a comeback.

I think when you get married, it should be forever. Even though I did get married once and it was annulled. I don't know. For myself, I just want to have kids by the same person and stay with the same person.

There's the wind And the rain And the mercy of the fallen Who say, "Hey, it's not my place To know what's right" There's the weak And the strong And the many stars that guide us We have some of them inside us

I think it's his perception of knowing how to make a record build, keeping the integrity of the song in the music and really adding a lot of musical elements to compliment my voice and to compliment the song.

I emphatically denounce Paul Ryan's use of my song 'We're Not Gonna Take It' as recorded by my band Twisted Sister. There is almost nothing on which I agree with Paul Ryan, except perhaps the use of the P90X.

Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.

I actually grew up being part of the kids' choirs, so I knew 'Joseph' basically my entire life. We've brought in this new multimedia aspect that really makes the show jump off the stage and into the audience.

I haven't ever really found a place that I call homeI never stick around quite long enough to make itI apologize that once again I'm not in loveBut it's not as if I mindthat your heart ain't exactly breaking.

I'm one of those people that if its something to eat I'm going to eat the whole thing, If I'm going to be in love I'm going to love you all the way and if my heart's broken, it's just shattered all to pieces.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don't know what's goin' on, I then got the money, and gone.

I quit eating red meat a long time ago. I'm a vegetarian, but not by a moral issue or any kind of stand. I still eat dairy. And I quit eating sugar about the same time I quit eating red meat, but I eat fruit.

A voice expressing emotion in a musical way moves on. It's like the finale of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - the world turns in on itself, as a universe unto itself, in the shape of one human being.

If it turns out to be a hit, well, good luck dealing with fame. And if it's not a hit and you can still survive and make music you believe in, well, then you're truly blessed. I think that's where we are now.

I couldn't really relate much to my younger sister, because she was born in 1992, and I was born in 1986. And then my older sister, we just didn't get on that much. Although we bonded over hating our stepdad.

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