Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are people who are great technical players like Eric Clapton, and there are people who are great intuitive songwriters like Daniel Johnston. There are sometimes people who are great at both the technique and the creativity, the two sides of the coin, maybe Jimi Hendrix.
I think human beings will always still really enjoy using our imaginations, and Fringe allows you to do that. It's slightly scary and believable. There just might be an alternate universe. There just might be people on the other side that are like us, living a different life.
I chose 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective,' or I'll say it chose me, and it was an absolute blessing, for the experience of being in Africa for seven months and learning so many different things, from languages to foods to greetings. On so many levels, it was an incredible experience.
I'd like to hope you end up a miserable, lonely woman. But actually, I hope you have children one day, Ellie Haworth. Then you'll know how it feels to be vulnerable. And to have to fight, to be constantly vigilant, just to make sure your children get to grow up with a father.
For me, I'll always stand up for the disenfranchised, and I'm going to make a big point of that. I'm not a protest singer as such, you know? After the endurance course of the early 70s and 60s, I don't want to become one of them twats. But you got to learn to speak the truth.
I think that people are having to do like really crazy things to shock people now, to get people's attention and it kind of, it's this way in lots of different aspects of life. You know, people fight for attention. It's competitive. So they need to be the one that stands out.
Really, I'm the type of girl, and I know other girls who are the types of girls who it's not about the chain, it's not about the car, not about the house or this, that, and the other that you think are impressing me. It's really the intellect. It's really stimulating my mind.
I changed from 'Zoo Kid' to 'King Krule' mainly because I didn't want to be called a 'Kid' when I was 20, so I just thought I'd get rid of that alias and change it now while I'm younger. I wanted to change it quick. and 'King Krule' was the first thing that came into my head.
It's strange. No one ever really talked to me about my voice. People started writing about it, and I was like, 'What?' I'm really about my lyrics, but more people were talking about my voice. It's cool, but at first I got upset because I wanted people to focus on the content.
What really makes me happy now is my home. I know that I have that to lose. But I don't see losing it. And I don't care if I never do another movie. And I don't care if I never get back on the road. I like to think that I'm gonna do that. But if I don't, I can live with that.
You know, we were outdoorsy types, my folks, and one of the first tapes I got, a friend gave me a cassette tape of Ella Fitzgerald singing with the Count Basie orchestra. And it was the first time, really, that someone's voice had really spoken to me, and it was just so pure.
I was used to dancing, but only when someone told you what to do. So in the nightclub I was all over the place, I combined everything. Street dance, modern dance, a bit of jazz and ballet, I was Twyla Tharp, I was Alvin Ailey, I was Michael Jackson. I didn't care, I was free.
I loved the Rolling Stones. I heard a little bit of country music creeping around the edges of some of their songs. Being a Mississippi kid, I could feel they had done their homework, even when I was a little boy. I could feel the Delta blues influence in a lot of their work.
I mean, I am a little different from the band in that I, I'm pretty much an isolated writer. I don't associate myself with a lot of other writers, unless like, I'll write someone like a fan letter, and we start talking from then on, or like a songwriter that I like, you know.
Fred Astaire told me things I will never forget. Gene Kelly also said he liked my dancing. It was a fantastic experience because I felt I had been inducted into an informal fraternity of dancers, and I felt so honored because these were the people I most admired in the world.
I remember playing with John Zorn and Ikue Mori in Taiwan in a school classroom. There were, like, 15 people there, maybe, and they were sitting at the classroom desks, and we played under the chalkboard. There's no difference between playing that and the 'download' festival.
To be honest, the first time round, I didn't think 'Fame Academy' was the worst premise in the world. You got people on, and they would write songs and develop themselves as artists. But then, instead of getting a little bit more credible, it got a little bit more ridiculous.
I have always loved David Bowie. When he began to experiment with pop music in the 80's, I really thought there was a really fascinating reverence for it. A lot of people looked at pop music as just idiot music, or dance music, and with this he was giving it a lot of respect.
I wanted to do it my way with my career, and I had this arrogant notion that people weren't just interested in my music but me as a person. That was my bit of arrogance, I guess. That's something I learned from Madonna. I was a fan right from the first time I heard 'Holiday.'
Sometimes ideas are coming so fast that I have to stop doing one song to get another. But I don't forget the first one. If it works, it will always be there. It's like the truth: it will find you and lift you up. And if it ain't right, it will dissolve like sand on the beach.
In Spanish, I record a lot of single-voice tracks, and in English, I 'stack' a lot of voices, so it's very different, and I think I got so used to recording in Spanish for six years that it was really refreshing and challenging to get in and record 'Double Vision' in English.
I want to have and adopt. I always have, ever since I was 18 I wanted a baby and I wanted to have and adopt because there are a lot of kids. I want to adopt an American baby though, you know what I mean, no offense. Just because there are so many kids here that need our help.
I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.
I am very into lyrics. I start with what the words are saying, what the storyline is saying, like a good script. It should really capture me, do something for me. If I don't get it, it's not going to move people, and if it's not going to move people, it's not going to happen.
I'll always have a totally open mind to endless possibilities. I want to do a dance album. Not Techno, but a record that's exclusively designed for people to dance to. That whole dance genre is kinda into its own world. I'd just like to get in there and mess around with that.
When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.
The reason I make music is so that I can influence people and inspire people, but I also want to make music that I feel happy about and that I feel is good. The challenge, which is why it's worth keeping going, is to constantly strive to figure out where the meeting place is.
People think of my entire image as a kid who lives a straight and narrow life, so I can feel myself not being able to act comfortably. I've been thinking that I want to go through some different life experiences and have been learning a lot while living with my other members.
I didn't want to be a solo Westlife - covers and ballads - and the reason I signed with Capitol Records was because they wanted me to write songs myself. It was pretty scary, but they put me in a studio in Nashville with some new songwriters, and the results were pretty good.
I think that as a band, we find joy, and we love what we are doing. We are very good friends, so we get on very well, and we have a lot of respect for each other. We have a lot of respect for what Westlife is. We have a very, very solid and strong fan base all over the world.
I don't go to shows because I just want to listen to the music performed live. I want to get to know the person who's performing it. Or I want to, like, take away a sense that I had an experience that nobody else is going to have again, or a unique experience for that moment.
I toured for 13 years, and it was very lonely, and it was hard work. I'm not afraid of hard work, especially if it's for stuff that I enjoy. But I actually don't think you could name one artist who enjoys promo or touring after the first three to six months of an album cycle.
I was comparatively late in understanding Bob Dylan's overwhelming importance as a songwriter. Everybody who does my job exists in the shadow of Bob Dylan. There are two categories: Dylan and everybody else. It's as simple as that. And it's going to be that way until he dies.
I'm a very self-conscious person, I think we all are, but I'm especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances, it's just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise.
I'm a very self-conscious person; I think we all are, but I'm especially not very comfortable in my body. I always feel really weird and awkward on the street or on the stage. It has nothing to do with circumstances; it's just an ongoing psychological state, like white noise.
You will always be criticized and teased and bullied for things that make you different, but usually those things will be what set you apart. The things that set you apart from the pack, the things that you once thought were your weaknesses will someday become your strengths.
At 24 I decided that my life is enough for me, and I stopped looking for some other piece to complete it. I also learned how to needlepoint ironic cross-stitches of rap lyrics and gave them to my friends as presents. I’ll let you decide which is the more important revelation.
It was a time of great loneliness. He had a group of friends, and suddenly I had no one and did not understand why. I felt excluded. Some days, the majority was in high school and did not know who to talk to. And that is something really terrible when you're twelve years old.
My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.
Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.
Everything I've done feels like I'm just as much a part of it as if I was the producer. It's still the same job: all of us together figuring out the common good for a song. That's the only thing that matters. It's not like, "I'm the boss, and I'm gonna tell you what to play."
Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.
I feel like if you told me I would be having a son, I would be like, 'Yeah, I'm gonna be a parent - I get that.' But when the doctor was like, 'You're gonna have a girl,' I was like, 'What? Who am I?' It's the craziest piece of information that changes who you are. It's sweet.
We think that this is just our world and we don't know what other people are thinking. Music actually is a phenomenal connector in that respect. It's a special language that defines certain boundaries and connects people in a particular way, a very emotional way, I have found.
At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history.
I never worry about looking cool in front of a guy. I have never been a self-conscious girl. Goofing around is part of being comfortable with yourself. I've always been good at meeting new people. I just say, 'Hi, how you doing?' and soon we'll end up laughing about something.
Exploring the different avenues and being open to synchronicity and crazy coincidences and little things happening is part of going on your journey to investigate - and the little jewels you might find along the way, my job is to bring those back home and put them on my album.
For me the greatest revenge of all is having a happy adulthood, waking up in my gorgeous turquoise bedroom in the morning beside a person who really inspires me. That's the best revenge a girl-loving-girl from the Bible belt could possibly have. And, importantly, it's healthy.
For me the greatest revenge of all is having a happy adulthood, waking up in my gorgeous turquoise bedroom in the morning beside a person who really inspires me. That's the best revenge a girl-loving girl from the Bible belt could possibly have. And, importantly, it's healthy.
I tend to be freer on the piano. I never took guitar lessons, so my reach exceeds my grasp - what I hear in my head I don't always know how to play. But I love to play over something else. I'm not a self-starter. I get kind of bored with the same three folk chords that I know.