Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I wound up graduating from the Los Angeles County School for the Arts as a theatre major and then was honored to be accepted into Carnegie Mellon's Musical Theatre program.
Fly me up to where you are beyond the distant star. I wish upon tonight to see you smile, if only for a while to know you're there. A breath away's not far to where you are.
The songs that I sing and the songs that I write have always just been what I feel my voice does well, and what my inspirations have been and a kind of culmination of everything.
I wasn't the best student, and for some reason, I always got music. While other people were having trouble figuring out notes on a page, I could listen to it once and play it back.
The time period I had in my life to look like an idiot and fail, and for no one to see that, came and went when I was 17. When you have early success, people are just lying in wait.
My life is an unfinished product, but instead of just saying, 'How do I top what I've accomplished,' I decided I wanted to move forward, express my growth and take a big step into the next chapter.
I did improv in junior high school. Figuring out my comedic timing helped my confidence in talking to the bullies and talking to people in class. If I could make them laugh, then I was in; I was OK.
I have to work hard to not look like a nerd all the time. My friends are the only people I know that don't care about my image. I need to have people who treat me just as Josh, not as Josh the singer.
When you have the chance to present yourself vocally, you realize a kind of brand develops around that vocal, and you start to see the public consciousness of you is only about one half of your brain.
We got to see Sondheim shows, 'Phantom of the Opera,' 'Cats' and all sorts of stuff. When you're 10 or 11 years old, it's just magnificent. The story-telling, the music - it lifts you out of your seat.
When you're walking in, basically like a kid a candy store, to a project where there's an endless canon of material, you have to step back from it as a self-indulgence. You have to look at it neutrally.
My feeling is, Twitter's free. If people want to have a political discourse with me on Twitter, and they disagree with me, I've got all the time in the world for that. It's when it gets nasty that I have problems.
I think that things like Twitter and the blogosphere are so instantaneously critical that I think it's actually created a bit of a culture of artistic fear to branch out too much because you don't want to be slammed.
When I started in the music business, travel became a huge part of my world, where it hadn't been at all. I visited parts of the world that I'd never been to and found that I was spending maybe 30 days at home a year.
I've seen a lot of people burn very brightly and very quickly, and I think you can become overindulgent sooo quickly in this business, and so I try not to fall into any of the trappings that would affect me very negatively.
What most people know about me, they know through my music. This time, I've tried to open that door as wide as possible. These songs are a giant step closer to who I really am and what my music is all about. Hence the title.
My school life was very much a wandering experience. I was having trouble in school and I was not making a lot of friends. So coming home and actually improvising on the piano and just coming up with melodies was an escape for me.
After using four different languages on an album, it's tough to decide which one I'm gonna actually learn to speak. I always study the lyric, make sure I know what I'm singing, and try to get the pronunciation as perfect as possible.
If I'm in a relationship, I'll go to the ends of the earth. If I'm on the road and we have a conversation, and she says, "God, I really wish I was there with you right now," I'll hang up the phone, send a car, and have the plane ready.
I wanted to focus on songs that I was inspired by growing up. I love so many of them from the last 100 years, but I really wanted, for my first step forward, to choose material that has inspired me and got me into the world of musical theater.
You live in a bubble, generally, when you're touring and recording - you're in confined - in alone space, wherever you are, in the dressing room or in the studio - so sometimes it's hard to grasp that bigger picture of things that are going on.
I think that my relationship with my fans has been very special from day one. It's been very special in spite of the fact that I don't think I would ever be able to call myself a press darling. I don't think there's ever been a superficial hype machine around me.
I'm always so pleased when I can get a song or be given a song that really speaks to me and I can interpret, but if given the opportunity to really write from the heart and try and bring some personality to whatever this genre would be, it was a great opportunity for me.
I'm ruthlessly picky when it comes to the crafting of an album, the choosing of musicians, the right mikes, the right studios. There was a time when it was, 'whatever you want.' Then, as you learn a little bit more about your tastes, I don't give in to that kind of thing.
Musically, between me and my fans and also me and my team, who between management and record label have always just let me be me, it's fun to pave a path. It's fun to feel like you're doing things your own way. So in that regard I haven't had to worry about any bar but my own.
Acting was definitely half of what I loved about storytelling and about theater. So, when I get a chance to do a cameo in a show or do a movie, it's a lot of fun and it's always great stepping outside of yourself and either playing a bizarro version of yourself or playing a character.
It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.'
No matter what your age and no matter where you come from, everyone can change the world in some way, whether it's being a mentor to someone younger than you or someone that doesn't have as much experience as you. If you're passionate enough, you can do whatever you want and definitely change the world.
Singing brings out in me what I can't normally bring out in everyday life. It's an incredible feeling to be able to bare your soul to people you've never met in a way that can make them understand so clearly what you mean. That's what I love most about singing ... it becomes my truest form of communication.
The shower is my time to open up my operatic chops, because of the enormous echo. You sound five times as big in the shower, so I break into some "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini 's Turandot or Pearl Jam. You've got to go big when you're in the shower. There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva.
There is a little bit of a head vs. heart kind of battle that happens sometimes with the song. There's the goose bump thing, where the melody or whatever it is just gets you and you don't know why. Sometimes, it's in a genre that you didn't think you liked and, all of a sudden, the song hits you and you just say, wow, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck. I love this song.
No matter who we are, no matter what our circumstances, our feelings and emotions are universal. And music has always been a great way to make people aware of that connection. It can help you open up a part of yourself and express feelings you didn't know you were feeling. It's risky to let that happen. But it's a risk you have to take-because only then will you find you're not alone.
A beautiful and binding morning The world outside begins to breathe See clouds arriving without warning I need you here to shelter me. If I could make these moments endless If I could stop the winds of change If we just keep our eyes wide open Then everything would stay the same And I know that only time will tell me how We'll carry on without each other So keep me awake for every moment Give us more time to be this way We can't stay like this forever But I can have you next to me today