Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The song succeeds or fails just based on whether you argue your point successfully. I like throwing images together, which create meaning if you listen to it one time, but if you listen to it another time you might get a different meaning.
I approach every show from the same fundamental perspective: this is a conversation, and my job is to make people leave the show feeling like they've seen something singular. It's not about smashing someone over the head from the jump-off.
I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn't retrospective. There's a lot of guitar bands that are a tribute to the 1970s or the Nineties. I want to experiment with guitar music more.
To create an album of love, I really had - I thought it was going to be easy, because I've always written love songs. But I thought if I really want to make a love album that contributes, that actually means something, I've got to go deep.
I have an amazing social-media wing man who manages my Facebook fan site. All my blogs get copied there. My e-mail in-box exploded, and I don't have that kind of time. My mom and sister have their whole life on Facebook, and I'm not there.
My favorite superheroes when I was younger were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and they still are. Simply because they rule and you've got 4 different personalities to choose from depending on your mood...And they're huge human-turtles!!
I was reading poetry to my girlfriends, and they were like, 'You're really good. You should go to some poetry readings or something.' And I eventually went and got a, you know, somewhat of a name for myself and a little bit of a following.
The best way to write a song is to think of something else and then the song kind of creeps in. The beginning makes no sense whatsoever. It just, like, rhymes. And then all of a sudden I'll go into, I am an old woman named after my mother.
When I go out clubbing I can dance 'til three o'clock in the morning with just a water bottle in my hand. I love dancing to anything with a good beat really. My favorite song to dance to at the moment is probably Drake's 'Best I Ever Had'.
When I go out clubbing I can dance 'til three o'clock in the morning with just a water bottle in my hand. I love dancing to anything with a good beat really. My favorite song to dance to at the moment is probably Drake's 'Best I Ever Had.'
I discovered the same thing Gram Parsons did, that soul music and country music are practically identical. Based off of the same chord structures, and the songs are of heartache and loss. The main connection is they both came up in church.
Artists shouldn't be made famous. They have this huge aura of almost god-like quality about them, just because their craft makes a lot of money. And at the same time it is a forced importance... It is man-made so the press can feed off it.
Sometimes I gotta look in the mirror and say, 'Hey, they're still saying you're too fat, but you're here! They gotta take it or leave it.' And in most cases, if they leave it, it's all good because they don't need to be in my space anyway.
I like the idea of having a calm, quiet room to work on my [art] while knowing that outside there's noise and a lot happening. It's reassuring to know the 'everyday' continues even though inside the studio you feel so disconnected from it.
When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, 'indie' wasn't a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as 'indie bands,' and then it became a genre.
Where I grew up in Dallas, things might be a little more traditional. People have the same things in mind. They're supposed to grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, and have children, grandchildren. That's the world I grew up in.
I saw a Velveeta commercial and it was playing, I think 'Burning Love.' He [Michael Jackson] had approved it - that's something we can't control. He can do whatever he wants with the songs he owns to make money, and that got under my skin.
If you are a soul singer, you are a soul singer. If you are a heavy metal singer, then you are a heavy metal singer. What's color got to do with it? I don't go around thinking, 'I sing soul music and I'm white.' I just sing the way I feel.
I like to have a great vibe wherever I am creating. I like to have movies playing on mute - just eye candy - maybe a friend in the room, maybe a lovely young lady, someone you can use as a muse, who can give you inspiration by her essence.
Everybody's career is different. In this new age of being able to talk to the whole world at once, the possibilities are staggering, really, to be able to do things yourself. But I've always enjoyed my relationship with the record company.
In order to make a normal-sized record, a singer songwriter should have a couple dozen finished songs. Once they go through the process of production, the ones that scream out at you that they're finished are the ones that make the record.
I kind of feel in a way all of us will forever be asking those questions of ourselves. Who am I and how do I fit in in the world and what is all this about? Because those aren't really... there are no answers to those questions in a sense.
I feel vulnerable a lot interacting with human beings and being honest with people, and if I read their energy kind of not getting or shutting me down or this feeling of where we're not connecting, that's kind of a vulnerable place for me.
I'm more interested in pulling out strands of joy from both myself and the audience. I'm not saying the music or songs are "light," just that when they're performed with the correct commitment it's a source of real pleasure, for me anyway.
I'm trying to imitate Jesus in the fact that he said to be like children, to love children, to be as pure as children and to make yourself as innocent and to see the world through eyes of wonderment and the whole magical quality of it all.
I know in the movie it looks like my grandmother is condoning it, but she really wasn't. But back in those days, men beat women. She was trying to tell me something without being judgmental, trying to help me understand that's what men do.
I'm trying to talk to my kids in Japanese, because I'm not a pro English speaker. My wife speaks to them in English. That's her first language. I don't want my kids to feel the same as me when I was studying English. It was so frustrating.
Around the time that Girls Aloud was at its biggest, I was offered some huge acting roles in America. I decided to stay loyal to the band rather than take those other opportunities. Sometimes I wonder whether I should have just taken them.
There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.
I'm not the greatest communicator. I kind of internalize a lot. See, I just said I need to be quiet, but that's not the kind of communication I mean. I mean expressing myself or even standing up for myself. I can sometimes be very passive.
Lyrics have become so dumbed down nowadays. People don't want to have to think about lyrics anymore, they just want to be told something. Until these great things started happening with us, I'd really given up on reaching people like that.
Michael Jackson will live forever through the thing that he put all of his life energy into: his music. I will do my part to keep the melody alive, to keep the energy forever changing form, but never ever dying!! Long live Michael Jackson.
Honestly, when I first heard that there were rumors out there about me being gay, I thought, 'Wow, someone must really hate me.' There's nothing wrong with being gay, but I just couldn't understand why someone would make up lies like that.
I grew up here in New York City and New Jersey, performing on Broadway shows, surrounded by some of my closest friends from the LGBT community. My father, a minister from New Jersey, shaped my view that love is love, that we are all equal.
I think that Valentine's Day is only as good as you want it to be. You know, I don't think it should be anything fancy, nothing crazy. As long as you're spending time with that person that's special, I think that's a great Valentine's Day.
At a young age I thought, 'Wow, that fiddle thing, that's pretty cool. That mandolin is great. These drums, I like these drums ' They were Indian drums. And I was saying, 'But that guitar. That guitar. Girls are going to like that guitar.'
I think about all these influences and musical cultures, then the opinion of the audience is of course important, but when I'm working on an album or a new project, I'm not all the time thinking about what the audience will think about it.
When people feel that they have failed, it's usually because somebody or something caused them to feel that way and taste defeat. I refuse to dwell on that. Yes, it sucks at first, and the feeling is valid, but it all happens for a reason.
Most of my songs are pretty sketchy. There's not a lot of bass sections. I don't write big bridges. Sometimes I'll try. But it's hard for me to focus that way, because I always think it's more interesting to just see what will happen next.
I wanna stay an eternal girlfriend. I want to have my boyfriend's children, but I don't think we need a piece of paper to regulate the game, and we don't have to go through the whole stress of a wedding and suffering to throw a good party.
From their '61 Cavern Club debut to their last rooftop concert eight years later, The Beatles gave every serious artist in their wake the songbook and sound for their career. It's the musical trough from which nearly every musician drinks.
Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together. I hope you use yours for good, because the only words you'll regret more than the ones left unsaid are the ones you use to intentionally hurt someone.
Writing is not work. In fact, there's nothing better. Writing is something that if the music business went completely away tomorrow - radio stations quit existing and music quit being popular and it was old hat - I would still write songs.
Music was around in my family in two ways. My mother would occasionally sing to me, but I was mostly stimulated by the classical music my father had left behind. I had an ear for music, I suppose, so that's what began my interest in music.
To me, being funny is more important than making a point, but I don't know. Most politicians are so interested in making points that they don't ... I'd rather be funny myself, and I'd rather listen to somebody with a little sense of humor.
I can't listen to so much music at the same time. I think you really have to have a diet. You're just processing too much, there's no place to put it. If you go a long time without hearing music, then you hear music that nobody else hears.
Life in general you gotta believe in you.... you live your life for you, you do what you do for you, because the moment you start to live your life for others you'll lose yaself within that. Focus on what it is you want to have. Go get it.
You hear about our conservative background and know that we're Christian guys, but we're not timid at all. I will take anyone on when it comes to outworking them or putting on a better show or standing up for people who are being put down.
I went through a soul-searching period. I went to a place that was a little bit more reflective and dark. I began to look at who I am, who I was, where I come from, what my culture is, and who I am as an African-American person in America.
In Malaysia, we have a lot of divas, like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey singers. And they were all so so talented, just very talented. For example, there's this one jazz singer, her name is Sheila Majid, and I was always singing her songs.