If you look at just right, there's not a nickel's worth of difference between what Buck Owens and the Buckaroos played on 'Buckaroo' and what the Ventures were playing. It's all that twangy instrumental stuff.

Sometimes I still wonder what my fans look like, but if I had to describe them, I'd say that they are everyday people with everyday needs who need a supernatural message to help them though their natural walk.

Being in recovery for a lot of years now, I've worked with a lot of people who've gotten sober and sat with a lot of folks who are suffering. Bearing witness is a really underrated thing; it's a big damn deal.

When I got famous, all of a sudden guys wouldn't look at me. Period. So I felt a little sad, a little frustrated. Like, What's going on here? I've never been prettier in my life and I'm so cool and successful.

I just think women should love themselves more than they do. Because I think - with all the social media stuff - we look at ourselves too much, and we just destroy ourselves when we're way cooler than we know.

I'm originally from a town called Ipswich. I currently live in Newburyport. It's a port city, so I'm right on a river. It's really close to New Hampshire; I can pretty much throw a rock. I like where I'm from.

It's very limiting to us as a species, the concept of better-than/less-than. It just seems to be at its end. I'm like, this all fades to black, and it's gone. It's dust. Choose carefully what you obsess about.

The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way. Leave room for God to walk in the room. And when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say 'thank you.'

I've tried to maintain a certain bit of originality in that I don't want to necessarily sing like a soulful gospel singer or like an ethereal Celtic singer - I never wanted to be pulled into any one direction.

There was no social media. There's not as many TV shows and magazines and things. Before you would release a single and you would go to HMV and do a signing and a performance, they don't even have HMV anymore.

My aunt is a newscaster in Lubbock, Texas, and she got a letter that said, 'Natalie Maines will be shot dead at their show in Dallas, Texas,' with the date of our concert. It was freaky to see that in writing.

For starters, I wanted to do an acting role in a movie that had nothing to do with the music business or in which I would play a singer or a songwriter. When I act, I don't even want to be thought of as Ne-Yo.

I had an emotional breakdown since I really had no idea what diabetes was all about. I wondered, 'why me?' Then I asked myself, 'why not me?' and realized that I might be able to help other kids with diabetes.

I have a lot of memos in my phone of songs; I've had dreams about a melody. It's always melody first as far as when stuff like that happens - I find that my melodic sense is my strongest asset as a songwriter.

What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.

I've always felt that animals are the purest spirits in the world. They don't fake or hide their feelings, and they are the most loyal creatures on Earth. And somehow we humans think we're smarter-what a joke.

Jumping off that cliff in Jamaica.It was years ago. It was at this place called Rick's Cafe. Actually, it was two cliffs. They were pretty high, probably a good 40- 50-foot jump into the ocean. That was crazy.

Well, I believe that the depth of your struggle can determine the height of your success. I was inspired to come out of everything I've been through and end up in a place where I never thought that I would be.

But I have to say, it was fun doing this Love Letter album because, hey, man, love has never failed. It has won every battle. And today and forever more it will go on undefeated. I'm also a very loving person.

I've written a song for Prince. I never showed it to Prince, but just to see if I could do it. At the time, when I sort of knew him, he was recording a song a day. I wondered if I could do that. So I wrote it.

I think a lot of parents hand people over a blueprint and say, This is how youre supposed to do it. And my parents, I think, kind of drew a picture and said, Heres the good stuff in life. How do you get there?

When our daughter was born, a light went on for me - there was more to life than what I was doing. It felt like being famous for being a paint salesman. It wasn't the dream I was sold on. I'd had enough of it.

When I started out, the idea of wearing interesting clothes seemed to contradict the idea of being a serious artist. The first Moloko record, 'Do You Like My Tight Sweater?' was kind of a reaction to all that.

I became a singer and a songwriter by learning on the spot, so think I always need to be slightly out of my comfort zone when I do something. I've never stopped being experimental because that's how I started.

I'm a situationist when it comes to anything creative, and that stands with the visual part of anything I do as well. I deal with the concrete things I have in front of me, and I think that's a wise way to be.

I would always talk with my friends in English and Spanglish, but it was more like slang. It was more like, 'Yo, what's up, dog?' But in Spanish, I know what's proper, and what's ghetto. I know the difference.

A lot of my songs, they're like puzzle pieces, and there's just one way to put them together. You could, if you needed to, get the scissors out and cut up things to make them work. But I don't want to do that.

I'm sort of planting Post-It notes all over my psyche. Do not skateboard wasted. Do not buy $10,000 rugs. Be careful what you say to journalists. You don't have to stay up until 7 A.M. - tomorrow is a new day.

After all, by providing early access to medicine, nutrition and stimulation, early childhood development creates lifelong improvements in health, cognitive development, school achievement, and social equality.

I don't type fast. I type with three fingers - two on one hand, and I only get one going on the other. I think my thumb's in there, but I'm not sure. I may be no better than an orangutan when it comes to that.

I'm a country singer, and I'm comfortable with that. But why does a country singer have to play only on country radio or a rock singer only on a rock station? I still don't understand why it's that big a deal.

As soon as you're willing to humble yourself and say, God, please help - then you can find out that His strength really is perfect, that He really does care for you, that He does really want to meet your need.

If you take all that I've learned from Joe and all that Joe has learned from me, and you throw all that into a song, not only are you using the gifts that God gave you, but also all the experiences you've had.

The art is what can't be put on a timeline. You can't say, 'Well, I'm going to make a record in May because that's when the producer has a window.' So just recording and getting things out is paramount for me.

I’ve learned that you can’t predict [love] or plan for it. For someone like me who is obsessed with organization and planning, I love the idea that love is the one exception to that. Love is the one wild card.

Popular music is like a big party, and it’s a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while, a guy with his shirt on inside out, wearing lipstick and a pillbox hat gets a chance to speak.

It's about realizing, painfully, you've kept that voice inside yourself, locked away from even yourself. And you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces. You realize you've become your own jailer.

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

I own more pairs of Calvin Klein underwear than I can count. At any given time, I probably have 50 to 60 pairs on deck. I travel with an entire suitcase of underwear and t-shirts, and they're all Calvin Klein.

To me, the message of my songs, of all songs, is "enjoy life." My message as a person who evidently doens't have much more planned is the same. It's the only message I ever thought art had any business having.

Violence needs to stop. All of us - men and women - need to speak up and teach our children that violence is never the solution. Together we can all make a difference. The best place to start is with yourself.

Yidaki didgeridoo has been used in every part of Australian regional culture, all around the country. It's become a message stick for the survival of those people, for aboriginal people and aboriginal culture.

Being in the public eye, you can't really avoid a lot of questions. A lot of questions are being thrown at you, whether it's about your personal life or your personal beliefs, and I'm happy to answer them all.

My voice went recently, never happened before, off like a tap. I had to sit in silence for nine days, chalkboard around my neck. Like an old-school mime. Like a kid in the naughty corner. Like a Victorian mute.

Everybody wants you to do this thing that you've always been doing forever. That's what they want: they want Martin Scorsese to make the same film two hundred times rather than trying to be something different.

Christina Aguilera has her own style, so good on her. I don't think anyone's every told her to put on some leather chaps and get her noonie out. She's an amazing singer but a lot of her music I can't even hear.

In terms of stage presence for me, I'm influenced by a myriad of things. A lot of punk performers, people like Dave Vanian from The Damned and Davey Havok from AFI was a huge influence on me when I was younger.

Promiscuity does not scare me as long as she is savvy and self possessed when puberty comes to call. My aim is to simply raise my daughter to be secure in her self worth and capable of happiness all on her own.

I live in a world of possibility and opportunity. You look for the light. There's darkness everywhere but you look for that spot of light and you work your way towards it, and you do what it takes to get there.

I do get credit for having a California sound to my music, but I don't think people really know what that means - they think the Beach Boys. I'm thinking more like Sunset Strip in the 1960s and stuff like that.

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