Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think I need to accept the fact that I am where I am today because fans have shared my music illegally and legally, but I wouldn't be here today without the Internet, so I can't speak out against it.
I always take a hot shower before I go onstage. It's so refreshing. I let the steam into my throat. That's the way I warm up my vocal cords - in the shower. I start by humming and then finally singing.
I don't determine the singles. I believe the record company sends a bunch of CDs out to people that they trust in the business, and wait for their response to determine which songs will become singles.
We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I'm going to be alive, I want to be challenged - to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn't an easy way, but it's a rewarding way.
When I went to record my first album, which should have been a punk album, there was a synthesiser in the control room. I'd never seen one before but they let me have a go on it and I loved it to bits.
The destruction of the natural beauty, the ecosystems, and the majesty of mountains affect us in ways we're not even aware of. Every time a mountain is beheaded, we chop off a little part of our souls.
I grew up in a school system . . . where nobody understood the meaning of learning disorder. In the West Indies, I was constantly being physically abused because the whipping of students was permitted.
Archiving is extremely expensive and time consuming. I'm sure an archivist would tell me I'm doing it wrong. It's an industry that's built upon essential ideas, and some of those practices are abusive.
I feel we need to stop worrying about pro-gay movements and start worrying about fundamentalist movements. It's not just about how gay people are treated - it's about how people are treated in general.
I do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while.
During 'Idol,' I wasn't expecting anything. I just wanted to survive the competition, but my album and my music are a big part of who I am. Hopefully it translates well and I keep growing as an artist.
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are...There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.
I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you're doing something.
I think the music business is probably not happy with what we've done, because the people buying the record have actually got to pick what they want to buy, rather than being told what they should buy.
I had a good record company right from the beginning, and I'm still with them after all these years. I think I may be the only person in the world that's had a tenure this long with any record company.
Well, Freddie Mercury is a really huge rock star in my head. I've always thought he was just so tough and such an amazing entertainer, really a contradiction in many ways as well. So he was incredible.
I like jokes and one-liners. I enjoy entertaining and making people laugh, being the funny man. But when I'm launched into unfamiliar environments I shut down, and as I relax then my character emerges.
If there’s something you want to do, then that means you have a goal. But that goal may change as you live. You never know when your interests may change direction, so always anticipate it, day by day.
I'm playing the Great American Songbook - all the blue-sky, puffy-cloud classics. Music that's been missing. I want to be one of the people who ushers it back in. Long as I can do that, man, I'm happy.
Confidence is a huge turn-on, but I like a man who's also kind and gentle. It's sexy when a guy listens and can have a conversation or read a book - something different than just going out to the club.
I think it's nice to have children. I didn't have many, and while I don't sit around regretting it, I maybe would have liked a couple more. But it wasn't meant to be, and I didn't want it badly enough.
The best part of making music, for me, is collaborating and working with new people and fresh sounds and all those things that gets people excited to continue in this business that we all love so much.
I was anorexic in the '60s and '70s, although it wasn't called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn't high on my agenda. But it is now.
When I was 14 I used to have a calendar on my wall, crossing the days off until I was 15, because the school leaving age was 15. Then three months before I turned 15 they changed the leaving age to 16.
The army influences everything I do. Certainly it teaches you discipline, which is a necessary element of development. I think there's more of a collaborative understanding in the band because of that.
I think, being emotional is this thing that people think you're not strong. They don't look at you as a strong person, and it's weird 'cuz honestly being emotional has nothing to do with your strength.
My favorite performance would definitely be "Toxic," which was my blind audition song. It was the start of it all and it was a song I had been covering before the show, so it was very dear to my heart.
My only failure was the restaurant in Myrtle Beach. I kept it open for four years. It was in a tourist town, it was only busy four and half, five months of the year. But the bills kept coming all year.
I was driving my 1959 Chevy Impala down King's Highway in Brooklyn with the top down, and I heard 'Oh! Carol' on three stations at the same time while I was channel surfing. I knew then that I made it.
You know what I've seen? Is that people who have gone through unfair, horrific experiences, is that they have this will, and when they get support, a chance, they can not only survive, they can thrive.
'Grease' changed my life in the most amazing way, and I've had such an amazing life. When things go wrong, you've got to believe you will get through them and focus on the positive things in your life.
I feel alive, fit and active. I have no plans for retirement. My only concession to getting a little older is that I like to have a cat-nap in the afternoon. After that, I can push on through anything.
The 'Great Walk to Beijing' was a fundraiser for my cancer center. It was a three-week trek with fellow cancer 'thrivers,' including celebrities ranging from Joan Rivers to Leeza Gibbons and Olympians.
In the largest sense, every work of art is protest... A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it... A hymn is a controversial song - sing one in the wrong church: you'll find out...
I was working for Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress folk song archive, and starting to realize what a wealth of different kinds of music there was in this country that you never heard on the radio.
For the live shows, I'm just getting my song together. I go back to my hotel room and I just listen to my song over and over again, figure out how to make it different and put my little Pia spin on it.
As a little kid, I used to lock myself in my room and put on my Whitney Houston CD's and pretend to be her and try and hit every single note that she hit. I used to dream that one day that would be me.
I'm inspired by day to day life, things that people go through, things that make people tick. Everybody has a story, so you try to put stories into songs and try to make it as entertaining as possible.
I wake up every day thinking, 'I just can't do it anymore.' There's nothing left to say, and I'm completely dry. And then I get in the room with somebody and they say the right thing, and I'm on again.
I understand why people do reality TV talent shows, I just don't think it's good for music. It's karaoke. What three people on a panel perceive as being great vocally, I think, isn't necessarily right.
There are other people coming out now, like Adele, people who are making their own music, doing their own stuff. That's a good thing. I think that music's okay. I don't think we need to worry about it.
Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain... Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore... Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.
When I look at great singers like Sinatra, Bennett and (Tom) Jones, I see great performers that can really move an audience. I really consider myself a troubadour privately and a song-plugger publicly.
I was very dramatic - very, like, 'It's never going to happen. My life is over at 16 because I'm not already famous. I'm not going to get my record deal. I'm not going to be able to sing for a living.'
Western record companies haven't always dealt with African musicians in the best way. Giving them a lot of money and telling them they're going to be bigger than Phil Collins is the wrong way to do it!
There are people hell-bent on the idea that we're a Christian band in disguise, and that we have some secret message. We have no spiritual affiliation with this music. It's simply about life experience.
If it's advisable to never share own problems with others as sages say that majority don't care, then it's more sensible to never brag of own achievements as their attitude is likely to remain the same.
Will I do another tour with Paul? Well, that's quite do-able. When we get together, with his guitar, it's a delight to both of our ears. A little bubble comes over us, and it seems effortless. We blend.
Since I was a young girl in the punk scene, almost all of my friends have been gay or lesbian, so for me, it's an obvious answer when it comes to whether or not gay people should be recognized as equal.
This is our culture, and I don't care who the musician is, if he avoids black people, then he is scared of something. He doesn't have confidence in himself or else he doesn't believe in what he's doing.