Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I love - you know, I'm a big fan of Prince and Curtis Mayfield and Smoky Robinson. It's something to be said about a man who can be very masculine but still display that sensitive side, and that falsetto does it perfectly.
Every artist wants to feel like they're still valid in a contemporary way. But you can't be so arrogant not to think that people who have thrown down their hard-earned money don't want to see and hear the things they want.
What people fail to realize is that any album we did, really, 90 percent of it reflected the songs people brought in. If someone had brought in two great rock songs for 'Cornerstone'... they would have been on that record.
A baby, a real live baby was the craziest thing a fan has sent. Someone left a baby on our front doorstep with a note that they wanted us to raise it. Of course, we contacted the authorities and they took care of the baby.
I still love the skinny jeans thing and I wear my favorite leather jacket constantly. I like being kind of a rock star. I love that I can feel comfortable in a small dress or I can feel comfortable wearing a baggy T-shirt.
When I was younger, I used to be the cheater. But I'm not talking about going all the way.... I wasn't doing that in high school! I'd have boyfriends and then spring break would come around and I'd be a little bit naughty.
Music keeps you eternally young. It just does. What I love about it now is touring without the guilt. Now it's like nothing is being held back. You get to eat mashed potatoes with both hands instead of one. It's fantastic.
It was your song that made me sing It was your song that gave me wings It was your light that shined guiding my heart to find This place where I belong It was your song Dreams can come true With God's great angels like you
I was a very shy child. I didn't like football. I didn't like the usual stuff that was shoved at. Sports were always down you and the Gaelic language, which I've actually disliked as a kid but as I grow up I quite like it.
I was at the Apollo Theater all the time, skipping school, and I worked in a barbershop. That's how I started with doo-wop. Now I've come full circle. I did all kinds of music. I used to work on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley.
There aren't any rules, as far as anything-and that applies especially to writing songs, whatever gets the point across. So you're just kind of brought up to feel-in any field, if you say you can do it, do it. There it is.
So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life.
Without a doubt, the warming of the past 100 years has been a welcome respite from a long and deadly Little Ice Age. The possibility that humans may have contributed to the recent warming does not make it any less welcome.
When I was a kid growing up, I lived in a little rural village called Woolton Hill, and the nearest town was Newbury. No bands played anywhere near us, so as much as I wanted to be on the grid and in the loop, I never was.
But that guitar is the perfect companion to the human voice. You rest it against your gut, against your heart, and when you strum it the vibrations go outwards for all to hear, but the vibration also hits you on your body.
I discovered at 18 that singing and songwriting was my strength. I decided that it was closest to my heart and if I pursued it then there would be no competition. I would just live my life being myself and living my dream.
I think that's really really important, you can't get in the industry, because you want to make money because number one, I don't think money should be motivation for anything because I don't believe that it has any value.
I'm excited about turning 40. I've been an adult for a long time, but there is a difference between being an adult and being a grown-up. I'm someone's mummy now and I'm enjoying that. I feel as if I'm about to hit my peak.
Howie Epstein was a kind, patient, and extremely talented musician. He took two years out of his life and dedicated his undivided attention to the making of two of my records. Those records changed my life thanks to Howie.
You can ask the people around me. I don't give up. I don't give up. I don't give - and it's not out of frustration and desperation that I say I don't give up. I don't give up because I don't give up. I don't believe in it.
Touring is an incredibly isolated situation. I don't know how people tour for years on end. You find a lot of people who can't stop touring, and it's because they don't know how to come back into life. It's sort of unreal.
I'll know when a song's really awesome, for sure, and I get super stoked, and I'm so high when I'm hearing it back, but then you sit with the record forever. You're mixing it, and you can really just over-think everything.
I like that I stand for something like American Idol which helps musicians and artists get out there. It's important to have shows like Idol because it's so hard to get into the music industry nowadays - nearly impossible.
The thing I hated about it was that you live in your trailer all the time and then they call you and you do maybe two dozen lines. Then they do that for three hours and you wait and wait and wait, and I don't like waiting.
One is distracted by this notion that there is such an thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy. And some people are graced by that style. I'm not. So I have to work as hard as any stiff to come up with my payload
On my US tour maybe three out of 30 shows there was an Elvis impersonator in the crowd but that's it. I usually get younger fans, and those that come that are of an older generation end up walking out because it's too loud
I quite like American music, like The Fray - I'm a massive fan of them - and The Killers. I also like more acoustic stuff like Ed Sheeran; I like this English songwriter James Morrison and another singer called Ben Howard.
The free market is at its best when everybody works in a fish bowl and tells you their point of view The hedge funds and portfolio managers have a right to do this We've muted the analysts and their presence in the system.
Most Americans I play for are clueless as to who Richard Ramirez was, so you can imagine how audiences in Portugal react. I'm not saying they don't enjoy the music; I'm just saying they're a little lost on some references.
I don't make records for pleasure. I did when I was a younger artist, but I don't today. I record so that I can feed people what they need, what they feel. Hopefully, I record so that I can help someone overcome a bad time
I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth.
I love the whole world of dance, because dancing is really the emotions through bodily movement. And however you feel, you just bring out the inner feeling through your mood...people don't think about the importance of it.
Yes, and I had pimples so badly it used to make me so shy. I used not to look at myself. I'd hide my face in the dark, I wouldn't want to look in the mirror and my father teased me and I just hated it and I cried everyday.
My family was reasonably liberal. Some kids I grew up with, their parents forced them to join the military, and my parents never, ever even brought it up. I imagine just looking at me, they were like "Not an army officer."
'A Perfect Place' is character-driven. The director for that wanted a couple of identifiable themes with a bunch of variations. That is what I did. The director for 'The Solitude of Prime Numbers' did not want that at all.
There are viable (and usually better) alternatives to the use of animals for food, sport, clothing, & experimentation. I beg you to discontinue any actions that might cause or condone animal torture, abuse, or destruction.
A lot of people do talk about the demise of the album, but I still believe that if an artist tries hard to make a great album, people will buy it and listen to it as an album, rather than just a collection of random songs.
I think that a lot of women are made to feel that they have not done the one thing that they were put on the earth to do if they didn't do the normal thing, if they didn't take the most traveled path. And it's unfortunate.
Well, the crazy thing for me is I think out of anything that's happened in the last year, all the success, people always ask what do you guys do with the money? I don't think they realize we're not really making any money.
That's what's cool - you don't know what your kids are gonna be drawn to or what's gonna excite them and what's gonna motivate them. So it's cool to see their personalities develop and see the things that they lean toward.
That's the good thing about music: you can sing about people's lives in its stages and feelings. Some songs can put something in context that you couldn't. They can free your mind or can make you think or can be redeeming.
It's all a progression towards hopefully one day making a record that can be the definitive you can offer. Some bands come in with that at first, and the great bands never really stray from that. I want to earn my stripes.
Kid problems are when you're bummed because girls don't like you or something silly, but then you get older and people start dying and going broke and whatever. People get sick. When you get older these things just happen.
The issue of gender was never my biggest concern; my biggest concern was doing good work. When the feminist movement really got going, I wasn't an active part of it because I was more concerned with my own mental pursuits.
I like revisiting my early work, and people like to hear it. I don't make people suffer through any experimentation or new material. When I go see an artist, I want to hear the songs that drew me to them, so I do the same.
Songwriting becomes a conscious attempt to delve into the unconscious. Even those writers who scoff at the concept of a spiritual source for their songs admit that the phenomenon of having them simply arrive feels magical.
The Band is probably the ultimate example of people taking all kinds of music, from gospel to blues to mountain music to folk music to on and on and on and on and putting them all in this big pot and mixing up a new gumbo.
You know, I did records by myself and I always will say the Isley Brothers, and featuring Ronald. I won't, you know, just, I won't try to deviate from the Isley Brothers, because that's what the family dream was all about.
There are so many wonderful classic roles, but I also would be really interested in developing something brand new. I think my heart would probably be in developing something brand new; I think that sounds really exciting.
If I had more time, I could've utilized the stage more and turned it into my own but since I used all my energy writing and producing songs, my mind was blank when it came to my performances. That's what I regret the most.