Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I learned a lot about what I do with my craft, how I present my music. A lot of things about him were very much an influence on me and everybody else. Once you get in that fold and you're around it, you get to experience something that I don't think we'll ever see again. There will never be anybody like Frank Sinatra. Ever.
I don't think being a musician makes me a role model at all. But I do believe that I have responsibility to offer people a helping hand when and if I can, just the same way that others have helped me. I think that it's important to keep that cycle going, and to give back to whatever your personal definition of community is.
Everybody recommended me to Sinatra and Don Costa, because everybody was enjoying my music. I got a big following going on. Nino (Tempo) told Don Costa "you gotta come see this guy." And that's how Don Costa heard about me, through Nino Tempo. Then, Don Costa brought me to the attention of Frank Sinatra and Reprise Records.
Most people say that Asian or female artists should be sexy in America, but I don't think that I have to be like that. I have a tomboy style. My choreography is not that way. So, I want to focus on my music style to match the choreography, which is really cool. No girls can dance those moves. I try to make them really fresh.
Whenever I sing 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' the way people sing along with me still excites me. It's one of the songs that audiences know all the lyrics to, and they sing along with me, and it makes me so happy. People also know my songs 'Holding out for a Hero' and 'Lost in France,' and this gives me so much joy on stage.
The irony is that I don't think we took a step backwards to make 'Group Therapy'. I think we took a step forward because it's a lot more complicated to make that kind of album. I think that album was far more produced than 'American Apathy', and it had a lot more harmony vocals and lots of intricate parts musically speaking.
I think nowadays it doesn't really matter where we are physically located. We create our own culture around us to a large extent, whether it's what we're listening to, what we're watching, what we're reading - it can have very little to do with one's immediate cultural environment. We are in a global culture in that respect.
I'm really lucky, I have my performing career so I can continue to do personal appearances. Most actors have to do a film. But I thought I would wait until I found something I really liked.A lot of my friends feel that I'm wrong to wait. They say I should have done My Bodyguard, but I don't think so. I think I've been right.
Of course this is Vegas and it is the melting pot for all over the world, but people from all over the world know Donny and Marie. It is amazing. I have been in the business a long time to realize careers can be fleeting. Five years is a long career nowadays for some people, and here we are still going strong after 40 years.
Starting in my teens, I was always standing on the corner near our apartment singing harmony with friends. We'd also go to the park and sing under the bridge near the lake for the echo. When it was cold out, we'd stand in the little heated lobby in the project's administration building, where my mom paid the rent each month.
Each time we arrive at a new level in extricating ourselves from economic, social, spiritual domination, we have a moment when we dance in the world of these new experiences, only to find that the music soon stops, the dance ends, and we're struggling once again to save ourselves from being thrown back into those conditions.
I am often tempted to think of success in terms that are defined by others: records sold, popularity gained, album reviews, etc. These are impossible demands, however, and they can never be satisfied. Letting finite others define our worth is a horrible way to live. Only the Infinite Other [God] has the authority to do this.
Why do we idolise Christian singers and speakers? We go from glorifying musicians in the world to glorifying Christian musicians. It's all idolatry!Satan is getting a great victory as we seem to worship these ministers on tapes and records and clammer to get their autographs in churches and concert halls from coast to coast.
I'm a very controversial figure in the Christian world. I don't believe if you're gay or you have a drink or you dance, you're going to hell. I don't think that's the kind of God we have. The Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the world are scary. I want to be a Christian like Christ - loving and accepting of other people.
It was always acting, singing and dancing that I loved. Not the horror of performing on the piano in front of an assembled audience of quiet people. I'd forget the piece just before I went out to do the concerto, the panic was too great . This was not anything that gave me pleasure. This was fulfilling somebody else's dream.
We were always in the shadows of the stuff that was getting more attention. So people learned to listen to us slowly over time. And, frankly, we learned how to listen to ourselves. It takes us a long time to write a song that we all really like, so it makes sense that it would take a while for the listener to get there, too.
Colombians, when they love an artist, they love him whether you're up or down. So why wouldn't I stay in a place where they loved me when I was in my worse moment, and they were saying I was a legend? I felt I was good, so I felt it was my home. I fell in love with the people, the culture. They made me feel like a Colombian.
A few years ago I appeared on GLEE and, Jane Lynch and I did a remake of the song that was very popular - someone told me it was in the Top 100 when it was released. First, walking on the set of GLEE the day we filmed it was surreal as they had recreated the entire original set from the music video. It was bizarre - but fun.
I suppose I could have sat back and pitied myself. For a time I wondered if I'd ever be able to go on to a stage and perform again. After a couple of weeks I began to feel I could fight my way back to health if I put my mind to it. I thought to myself: 'Pity never did anybody any good. Go on. Patsy, show 'em what you can do'
Speaking for myself I have influenced with lots of John Coltrane, Van Morrison, Joanna Newsom, Mississippi Records compilations, Simon & Garfunkel, Duncan Browne, Judee Sill, Sublime Frequencies releases, Ali Farka Touré, John Fahey, Flower Travellin' Band, Sagittarius, Toumani Diabaté, Philip Glass, lots of different stuff.
When someone like Kurt Cobain or Jack White comes out, they didn't go, "He sounds just like Muddy Waters," did they? They just said, "He's great, he sounds like him." When women come out and men write about them, they tend to write about them in a way that other men can understand, which sometimes can seem a bit patronizing.
My greatest beauty secret is being happy with myself. I don't use special creams or treatments - I'll use a little bit of everything. It's a mistake to think you are what you put on yourself. I believe that a lot of how you look is to do with how you feel about yourself and your life. Happiness is the greatest beauty secret.
I feel like a lot of people in the hip hop world don't take me seriously as a rapper, and I feel that first-and-foremost I came up as a rapper before I started singing. All a lot of people know from me is 'Cupid's Chokehold,' and they don't scratch the surface and see beyond that dude who sings the song about his girlfriend.
You were a terrible baby, do you know that? Bawling all the time, never sleeping. And one night you just wouldn't shut up, screaming like a dying pig. I walked over to your crib, I looked down at you. I wanted to strangle you. And you looked up at me and you stopped screaming. You smiled at me. Don't die so far from the sea.
When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future... and you don't do it.
I used to have seven dogs; now I have a more manageable four. I was in Cornwall, and one dog got swept away downstream, so my cousin dived in to get it, then her dog dived in. So I jumped in to rescue hers. Those dogs are my calm. That's how I cope with the business - I get the sanity on my woodland dog walks, being a tomboy.
I think that my music is really honest and I think I have something to say. The world revolves around so much negativity that I feel we really need something positive right now. I think people need to be encouraged to strive after those things that seem impossible. That is one of the common themes that runs through my record.
Seven has always been my lucky number. It's on my guitar pick; in sports, that was always the number I was, and 'Riser' is my seventh album. With this album kind of coming to an end and having seven nominations at the ACMs, it feels like a bigger story in play for me, and it's the perfect number. I wouldn't have wanted eight!
But for me, I thought you made a record, you got on a bus, went out and played your shows and made a lot of money. That was the way it was supposed to go down. But there's a lot more to it than that. There are a lot of early mornings, late nights, a lot of traveling, a lot of being away from home, being away from your family.
Is everybody in?... Is everybody in?... Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin... The program for this evening is not new. You've seen this entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death. You might recall all the rest. Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?
I went to squat with a bunch of friends - creative, intelligent, political people. We got involved in a community project funded by the Arts Council and we made this video. I sang a poem and somebody, I think it was Richard Coles, who was later my partner in the Communards, said I had a very strange sound and I should use it.
It has been said that genius is only the power of making continuous effort. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it. We are told that there is no failure, except in no longer trying - no defeat, except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own weakness of purpose.
To be diagnosed with cancer was a frightening thing, and my first reaction was sheer panic, but I was really fortunate that the cancer was caught at such an early stage that I didn't need chemo or radiotherapy. But I know that cancer is a chronic condition, and once you've had it, you're on the list, because it can come back.
You’re allowed to believe in a god. You’re allowed to believe unicorns live in your shoes for all I care. But the day you start telling me how to wear my shoes so I don’t upset the unicorns, I have a problem with you. The day you start involving the unicorns in making decisions for this country, I have a BIG problem with you.
Basically it's the idea of celebrities being in the spotlight and just because you think that they should be perfect, that they're still human and they still have flaws just like everyone else. So that was the real meaning behind "Dollhouse", at least how it related to me because it's something I was annoyed with at the time.
As individuals, we have to act independently of the politics at hand. I don't feel an added responsibility to do anything more beyond being who I've always been and acting decently. I've always felt people are looking down on us and expecting us to fail. That's enough of a burden, and we automatically try to act with dignity.
In this life, we are in a constant search for inner peace. We long for it in all aspects of our lives, both personally and professionally. The truth is that we cannot have inner peace without balance. It seems that having too much or too little of anything completely throws off our balance, therefore limiting our inner peace.
I'm really glad that I'm not Anna because I don't want to be there again. I've been there. But when something does happen to me, whether it's that movie or whether it's actually happened to me, I feel that it's my duty to actually share that with all of you guys. I want to immediately go to my desk and start writing about it.
What I try to get beyond is playing music at people and, instead, to play music with people because audience members are constantly part of the experience. What they say in their body language, what they say in their eyes, what they sing with me... it's an 'us,' and there's a communication that's like... it's like church, man.
It's much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won't keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don't know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we've got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, 'Is this it? Are we still relevant?'
There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts.
Being singer/songwriter implies versatility and being able to create more than one medium, and R&B artist is a box, simple as that. It is 'that's what you do, that's what you are', and that's a little unfair, to me, because I don't just do that. So I like singer/songwriter because it allows me to move a little bit more freely.
The thing is, people can't complain about profit-oriented moves if they're only interested in profit themselves. You can't have it both ways. If they're willing to polish up a gift and sell it to make money, they can't really complain about the fact that somebody above them has sold them down the river. That's the way it goes.
Playing is just about feeling. Playing isn't necessarily about misery. Playing isn't necessarily about happiness. But it's just about letting yourself feel all those things that you have already on the inside of you, but you're all the time trying to push them aside because they don't make for polite conversation or something.
A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war.
I have no memories of my childhood in Texas. When I was about four, we moved to San Francisco. I was in the middle of seven brothers and sisters: three girls and four boys. Most of my older brothers and sisters got the blame for everything, and the little ones had a free ride. We loved each other but fought like cats and dogs.
I have such happy memories of performing in a choir and I don't think I'd have got where I am today without all that experience. So my advice to young singers is to either join your school or church's choir or find one in your local area. Choral music at any level teaches you so much about musicianship and blending your voice.
My thing is, when you put a bunch of rules on a tour, you have to hire three more people to enforce all the rules. So, with me, I want everyone to feel comfortable. It's a lot of little moving parts out here, and little hiccups will come. At the end of the day, the show's going to go on, and I want everybody to truly enjoy it.
I made music on Seven the same way as on the other albums. I only used acoustic instruments... I'm looking for instruments that have vocal sounds, forgotten instruments like the guimbri... The first and second albums were about the voice, what came before. This album is about introducing those sounds into modern, Western life.
Because we take these huge long breaks, and then I just kind go, "Okay, fine, this is the way that I've chosen to live my life, and if the band now fades into obscurity, so be it, that's my decision." But then we come back and it's still as big as ever, or bigger. It's always been a surprise to me, that it worked out that way.