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I'm independent so I have the freedom to drop music whenever I want to. I strategically plan everything. I'm a Capricorn, so I'm a planner. I work very hard, but I'm a planner at the same time. I've just been stock piling all this time waiting for the right opportunity to put out music. With me being locked up to a contract, it took years for everything to pass.
Gather up your telegrams Your faded pictures, best laid plans Books and postcards, 45's Every sunset in the sky Carry with you maps and string, flashlights Friends who make you sing And stars to help you find your place Music, hope and amazing grace Maybe what we leave Is nothing but a tangled little mystery Maybe what we take Is nothing that has ever had a name
If you're serious about singing or acting, which are two art forms that get repetitive, the way to keep the music fresh is to recognize that it is totally impossible for it to ever be the same, night after night. You open your mouth and you'd like a certain sound to come out of it, but it doesn't always come out exactly like you thought it was going to come out!
I found myself in Zurich Airport. I'd done a TV show, oddly enough, with Mavis Staples. That's the way they do it in Switzerland. And I'd had a bit of a late night with members of her band. And I was - my flight was delayed. And I was sitting in the airport, and I just came up with the idea. And by the time, we landed at Heathrow, I'd pretty much sort of got it.
Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.
Like Thornton Wilder said, time is not a river, but rather a landscape that you step in and out of. I've always found that true of creative work, and I've heard so many songwriters and writers in general say the same thing... When you're going into the realms of your self and trying to tap into the mystery of this creative source, linear time kind of falls away.
I am saying what comes out, because I'm really not a methodical writer. I'm not a good building writer, where you are like "well, I going to make a song today, and I think it will be a pop song." Some people are great at it and it's beautiful. If I am feeling musical and I pick up the guitar, usually something will eventually come out and I'll see where it goes.
Writing original songs is much, much harder (I think) because you only have yourself to conjure up EVERY single moment a listener is going to hear. It's a craft that goes directly from your brain to their ears. You can never be sure that what you're writing is gonna be good enough to keep a listener engaged and truly experience something. It's a shot in the dark.
It's just about pushing yourself to realms that are uncharted. I love to get to that place where I don't know what kind of music I'm doing, I don't know if it's any good, I don't know if it's anything. It's a big question mark. The idea is to have interesting results. That's my bottom line. Not just a creative fantasy world or something like that, but a mood too.
It makes me so mad that some people underestimate the wisdom and energy of young people. All because they don't look the way older folks think they should look. I'm working on a song about it. Maybe some of those closed minded people will realize long hair and tattoos don't mean they should be ignored. Close minded people are part of what's wrong with this world.
I'm thankful for a pair of shoes that feel really good on my feet; I like my shoes. I'm thankful for the birds; I feel like they're singing just for me when I get up in the morning... Saying, 'Good morning, John. You made it, John.' I'm thankful for the sea breeze that feels so good right now, and the scent of jasmine when the sun starts going down. I'm thankful.
I very easily decide in certain situations that I'm an outsider. That's just my own craziness. I think that I have sympathy for those characters who are like that, but I love it when the humor comes from a character who is serious about his situation - only the way he's thinking about it is all wrong, or the ways he's solving his problems are never going to work.
And the other thing for the sort of posher kids was a sort of lethal scooter, you know. One of the things that you just push along with your - really heavy, lethal, you know, trap your fingers in and every bit of metal got rusty very quickly. And the girls I seem to remember they had a thing like a broomstick with a horse's head on the top which they sat astride.
Great potential for personal empowerment can be found in attending to our awareness of global problems and to our understanding of how they connect with each other and with our personal lives. The process of naming the danger, saying aloud that the threats to life on earth are real, moves us from the numbness of denial to the aliveness that makes action possible.
There are no rules when it comes to love. I just try to let love surprise me because you never know who you’re going to fall in love with. You never know who’s going to come into your life - and for me, when I picture the person I want to end up with, I don’t think about what their career is, or what they look like. I picture the feeling I get when I’m with them.
Most people are walking around the city like corpses; they aren't alive enough to notice the trash. They come from other places and they see it as a big garbage dump. Do you want to live and work in a garbage dump? I don't. That's partly because I grew up in the most pristine environment possible - Hawaii, where it is sacrilege to leave your garbage on the ground.
I was inspired by movies like 'Jawbreaker' and 'Carrie' for the 'Break the Rules' video. I never went to prom when I was at school so this was kind of me living out my weird fantasy of what prom would be like in my head. I asked Rose McGowan to be in the video and I never ever thought she would say yes, but she did... so she came to prom too... And she trashed it.
Clive [Davis] tried to tell me that saying certain words in a song - or as he says, 'putting some balls into it' - isn't bad, it's just strong emotion. Well, there are certain words and emotions I don't want kids hearing, and I'm not changing because they think it's going to sell better. This is going to sound horrible, but I got 12 million votes doing what I did.
The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the field
So as I think back on it now, I think it is safe to say that music is something you both hear and feel. I also realize that feelings change frequently and that for the most part, they are not a constant. They change from high to low, happy to sad, content to ecstatic and back down again. Not all music has the same purpose, but most music makes you feel "something.
I wrestled a lot with self-doubt. I've always had such a strong desire for what I wanted for my career, and as I go through it, I'm watching it change and morph into something a little bit different. So there was a lot of confusion as to whether I really wanted to do it, whether I wanted to go for it, because I put so much energy and effort into it, and it's hard.
I just do as many songs as I can and then I put it together when I get sort of in the middle, maybe 30 songs, that's when I start really thinking about the name of the cd and what direction all the songs are going, that kind of stuff. But I don't ever want to corner myself, I just want to be able to express whatever I can express in songs and just pick after that.
I've making videos since I was seventeen I was originally discollecting vintage hmmm... footages from different archives and setting moving pictures to classical music clips that meant a lot to me. Maybe there were places I have been where nice things have happened. I had a vision of making my life a work of art and I was looking for people who also felt that way.
I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK.
The difficulty in working with someone on a show like Idol or X Factor is they have an idea of what they think is cool in their heads, and it's important as a producer to maintain control of the session and not let it get side-tracked or chase too many rabbits. But it's also important to let the artist feel like their opinion matters, so that balance is difficult.
It was really hard to do that at first. You have been holding onto this thing - even though you know what someone has done before and you have faith in what they can achieve - it's just a matter of whether that's gonna be right for you. At first you do need to be quite protective; to make sure it's going down the right track, so I was pretty nervous to begin with.
I originally started it to help me with anxiety & insomnia. It’s already made my life waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better & even with my stage fright. Which I used to think there was no cure for…Last night was the first night I’ve slept 8 hours naturally in my entire life. I felt the best I have in ages. It’s better than any medication or all of the other nonsense I’ve tried.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
All I'm doing is being authentic and real and singing about the emotions I go through as a human being. I don't think we should be nervous about expressing who we really are when it comes to being a believer but also when it comes to being someone who goes through real life. You have to experience real life before you can understand what it means to really worship.
Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are doing pretty well at getting noticed - a lot of people are doing pretty well at it. But you wonder whether they'll last, because many of them don't have the ability to get an audience to love them. You say, "That's a fabulous body" or "I like that song"; you don't say, "I love them because I know them." You can't know them.
I used to want to be a war photographer, and I used to want to be a ballerina and a comedian. I used to want to be a writer. I invalidated myself; it’s a mistake for me. [...] There’s just a lot of stuff that really moves me, and I don’t know how to express it, and I just want to try to do the best I can and surround myself with good people who don’t invalidate me.
We've got wars. Imagine having more money, you could buy more beer. Have you been to Dublin in its heyday like in the boom heyday at like 4:00 in the morning on a Sunday or Saturday? It's like beyond New Orleans. It's like St. Patrick's Day every day. It's not good. I don't even like pubs anymore. I like going for a meal and having a bottle of wine. Be more gentle.
The song is based on a lot of observation and a lot of speculation. But in sort of a pointed way its kind of about Madonna...I think it was a particular time where I was being bombarded with her image on TV and in magazines and her whole schtick kind of speaks to me in that way...like she's going through some sort of problem. It seems she's getting a bit desperate.
When we understand that we are a human race, what affects you affects me, what affects her affects you and so on and so on, then we'll look at this thing [HIV/AIDS] for what it really is. It's a disease that's out to kill all of us. What will make it continue is our prejudices, our ideas about it, and the fact that we don't look at ourselves as one giant community.
I sometimes think that as singles it's easy to bind to this mentality that my future husband's going to ride up on a white horse, I'll know that he's the one, and we'll start our life together. That happens to people once in a blue moon. I have heard of that - never really dated anyone and then this person comes along - but it's not probable that that would happen.
No one has the right to criticize you for how your body looks, but they will. One thing I've learned from experiencing this exact kind of criticism is that no one else can label your body except for you. No one gets to have a place in your mind if they weren't invited there by you. So please do me this one favor: Don't let their ugly words into your beautiful mind.
The things that affect you most deeply - the things that will destroy you if you don't sing about them - are the things that you often end up singing about. It's really just about saying those things that everybody thinks but no one will say and making a connection by uncovering these diamonds that are inside of all of us that no one wants to tell each other about.
Advertising agencies come to you and they are great fans, they are great creative people themselves, but they ask you to do something, and you say, "Well, we will, we'll create something together." And it is work. It's like you're doing something and they're saying, "Change this" and "Change that." It's not hard, horrible work, but creatively it's not just freedom.
The 1970s was probably the most exciting decade to be a teenager, from discovering Little Richard at the end of the 1960s to glam rock to punk rock to electro music. So much happened in that 10-year span. There were so many musical revolutions. Some were happening at the same time. You had disco going on behind punk. You had Michael Jackson. You had the Sex Pistols.
At my lowest moments, I think of people who come to shows. I still get very sad and sometimes I feel like I have no friends, but when that happens now, I'll think of people whose names or faces I don't know - they're my friends and they love me. I've got them. It really does save me. I still feel awkward, but that's the one thing I can grab onto at my lowest points.
I'd like them to see that those things that set us apart or make us different can be wonderful contributions to the world around us. I'd like them to see that size and color are irrelevant to the dreams we envision for ourselves. And I'd also love for them to see that life is a journey, and every step of the way, we can learn something and become stronger and wiser.
I was curious as to why a million Americans weren't lining the beaches in boats and with buckets to preserve the life sustaining resource that is the Gulf of Mexico. Personally, as a surfer, I was most sorry for my fellow watermen. Seeing beaches closed due to contamination just broke my heart. If that ever happened in San Diego I'm afraid I might be forced to move.
I once had a dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events some of those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. But I didn't really mind, because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.
I am running through a snowfall which is her thighs, he dramatized in purple. Her thighs are filling up the street. Wide as a snowfall, heavy as huge falling Zeppelins, her damp thighs are settling on the sharp roofs and wooden balconies. Weather-vanes press the shape of roosters and sail-boats into the skin. The faces of famous statues are preserved like intaglios.
I've had the opportunity to play the drug dealer who gets gang-raped, and I'm like, "For what reason? Doing it just to do it? To just show people that I can be sexy or dark?" I don't want to do something just to make that point. It needs to happen organically, and I'm really confident it will. I'm a pretty patient person, and I'll wait until we find the right stuff.
It's one of many ways that Barack shows me and the girls how special we are. And that's the thing that touches me about him. I don't care what's on his plate. I don't care what he's struggling with. When he steps off that elevator into our residence he is Barack and dad. And there's just those little things that you do that remind you, that you know, I still got ya.
Dream dictionaries are so disappointing. They're so limited, and I think they're just total bullshit. I really do. I don't know much about the Freudian theory of dreams; it's probably more interesting than your average hippie dream dictionary, but it's got to be a lot deeper than that. It can't all be about sex all the time, so I don't know if Freud is right either.
Sometimes when we fall in love there simply is no going back. There's not turning back to the people we once were or simply falling in love with someone else. When we truly fall in love and find the person we're going to spend the rest of our lives with there's no falling in love with someone else. It simply isn't possible. You don't have your heart to give anymore.
I actually enjoy that I never really needed to be hanging out with every celebrity in Hollywood; I just go home and hang out with my cousins, my best friends. I'm not treated like royalty; they love me to death, but they don't treat me like royalty. So it's easy for me; they'll tell me the truth, whether it hurts or not. And I need that; I've always been given that.
Without you hearing a melody or music or anything like that, it would say something to you. So, that's what a song is to me. Now, you have a lot of songs that come out, and the beat carries them over there, because of the beat, and because of some other factors and so on and so forth. But I want mine to be a song, if you read it, it's going to mean something to you.