I feel quite connected to the past, and my memory. Everything that I've ever done I can still relate to, and feel connected to it in a way. There's no part of my life that I look at and go, 'I don't recognize that person at all.'

Now I'm a symbol of what to be and how hard to work. I have heads of major labels say, "I wish you could teach our artists how to do it." At one point I was the punching bag of what not to be, and now I'm the model of what to be.

There were blogs that called me Miss Piggy. It's a really hard thing to see as a teenager, especially when you already have problems. Reading what people had to say about me online definitely made it worse. People can be vicious.

I am always keen to discover something new, but my advice is always to exfoliate. Get rid of those dead, dry cells; then the new skin is ready for moisturising, and you find your inner dewy, youthful glow. Its in there somewhere.

It's important for people to realize that music is gender-less. We are proving that every single day. On this tour, there are more women than men in the audience, and it's beautiful to see these girls own these hard-rock moments.

We teach young kids from 8 to 14 or 15 about their musical heritage through great songs written by American songwriters. We don't do too many modern composers, although we include songs from Billy Joel and other writers like him.

We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope.

You can't be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I'm very thankful for that. I'm very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.

I do like choral music a lot, the voice is a pretty strong instrument - out of all the instruments, it's the most intimate. There's nothing you can do about it, it just feels so good when you hear a bunch of voices sing together.

I wouldn't call myself an actor or a singer for that matter, just a journeyman. [...] I feel I must have a talent somewhere for doing something but I'm still not terribly sure what it is. I suppose it's a talent for being myself.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written

All my feather stuff is in L.A. at a temperature-controlled stage-storage place. I keep all my good stuff there because if I had it all in my house, I wouldn't have any room for my regular clothes. It has to, like, not live here.

I've got the new single "Close". We got the second single "Dance" we're going to follow up with. We're just making sure we make quality music the world can feel and that we can get on stage and have a presentation for the people.

DJ Sliink is amazing, and his production is on the next level. There are a lot of EDM producers that I'd like to work with, not for the sake of having an engineered record, but for the fact that I love their production and music.

I finished high school, moved to Nashville for college, and set out to break into the music business. Every night when I called home with news of my experiences, my mom and dad would encourage me to keep taking those small steps.

Learn it well in your head, know it well, pick things you know and bring the old you and all the experience you have from singing these various kinds of feelings that are still related to what I have done in the rest of my career.

People worry about their looks going, but go deeper, and you realise you know yourself more and you're more comfortable in your own skin and more settled within yourself, and that's a really great basis on which to live your life.

I think you can't have this discussion and you can't have a discussion about feminism and the consciousness of the world without having a discussion about what has happened to men lately. They're holding the other side of the bag.

I'd actually say that every musician is a human being, and that not everybody likes being social. But with music, there are all these ingredients to the business that have nothing to do with writing songs or playing an instrument.

Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes Now that I can hear all your poison prose Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy There are no words for me inside your dictionary

In the music industry, it's pretty easy to make an album just because you want to keep going, like, 'This is the formula.' But the formula is your life. You have to live your life and you have to live it well - that's the formula.

Once, I was up north with friends and, after dinner, one lady who was at the table said, 'Would you sing for me?' and I went 'Well, sure.' And the other women are looking and going, 'You never sing for us.' Well, you never ask me.

When you play in smaller places with a smaller symphony, sometimes there's a difference in quality. Sometimes it's murderous. Sometimes it's real torture. Other times, you get a wonderful surprise. But there's never a dull moment.

We are the outcasts, we are the ones that are different, we are the ones that never got along with anyone else, we are the ones that went back to our rooms and put on our headphones and listened to those records that made us happy

I'd be happy to live till 80 as long as I was comfortable and in good health. Mind you, ask me again on the eve of my 80th birthday. Even so, I hope we don't all start living to be 120. I'm not sure I'd cope with another 60 years.

I did the coffee house thing - we have coffee houses where people play, or we used to - and when I was 14, I started there. Just played all the time. Every weekend I had a show, or every Thursday. Open-mic nights, the whole thing.

There is no one who has ever created music with the combination of intelligence, intuition, depth, creativity, and humor that Jerry Garcia has. His work and life will continue to be a limitless source of inspiration for all of us.

When Marcus Garvey spoke about self-reliance, he wasn't only talking about people of colour. It's like self-reliance in general, for anyone. Just keep moving and moving within the right direction, and everything will be all right.

What am I supposed to do, Sit around and wait for you? Well I can't do that, And there's no turning back. I need time to move on, I need love to feel strong. Cause I've got time to think it through, And maybe I'm too good for you!

I am not going to condemn anybody. That's where religion gets a bad name, when people get holier than thou. We are all human. If my children make a mistake, I want them to know it is all right and they should try harder next time.

Broadway's a lot of work, don't get me wrong. It's eight shows a week. You hardly ever see the sunset. I remember when I left, I was like, 'Oh! The sun's setting! I haven't seen that in a year!' Singing eight shows a week is hard.

There are certainly good examples of incredibly brilliant, beautiful music that has been made commercially available and sold everywhere. But I would say that, for the most part, quantity certainly does not speak well for quality.

You better change your ways / And get really wild. / I want to tell you something / I wouldn't tell you no lie. / Wild women are the only kind / That really get by, / 'Cause Wild Women don't worry / Wild Women don't get the blues.

I really want to work with Eminem. I know it will never happen, but I would love if he let me do a hook on one of his songs or he featured on one of my songs. It would be incredible. I've just always admired him since I was young.

I don't really think that audiences are that much different. I think that a fan is the same whether you are from here or from Japan - you come to a show because you like the music. I don't really see much of a difference anywhere.

I think great songs can come from anywhere and you constantly have to be able to look out for those. I think a lot of the times people will try too hard to write everything themselves and therefor miss out on great songs that way.

I'm a sinner just like everybody else and I have my faults and I've been through my dark times in my life to where I wasn't walking the walk and talking the talk, or I may have been talking the talk, but I wasn't walking the walk.

I've been out with lots of other artists opening for them on tour, and you just learn that none of their success came easy - it was all hard work for them, and you have to buckle down and get ready for the hard work yourself, too.

I am always keen to discover something new, but my advice is always to exfoliate. Get rid of those dead, dry cells; then the new skin is ready for moisturising, and you find your inner dewy, youthful glow. It's in there somewhere.

'Boom Bang a Bang' was a huge part of me, maybe a part that I didn't relish, and there might be psychological reasons for that - I was a child being made to do things I didn't want to do. I was perhaps an elitist, a bit of a snob.

I think it's less stressful to just make decisions as you go, because plans never work out, but you never run out of dreams. You have an eternal bucket list where you keep crossing things off, and keep adding things to the bottom.

Even now - I'm 35 - I've been in a relationship for 15 years with a guy, and we have two full incomes and no kids, and it's hilarious. We're children, perpetually, because of this rock and roll thing. But it's still so fulfilling.

I love using lots of different pedals in the studio because you have the time to experiment with sounds. But when you're singing, fronting a rock band, and playing, you don't really want to have to think about a lot of that stuff.

Barry White, Smokey Robinson and Curtis Mayfield are big influences for me. But I'm also a metal head. I was in a bunch of punk rock bands. The Bee Gees, hip-hop and the Beach Boys are just as much of an influence on me as Smokey.

I meditate a lot and pray for guidance. If, in a moment of self-contemplation or meditation, I were to feel very strongly that I shouldn't be an entertainer anymore, that I should be doing something else, I would stop immediately.

I think I was blessed with this talent for a reason. No one told me how to write a song, but I'm just good at it, you know. There are a lot of other things in my life that I'm not so good at, but writing a song is not one of them.

I find the positive in the negative all the time. Any time you give something power, it wins, and it can continuously happen, so I just let negative people know they have no place in my life. They have no place around my children.

The more times I was turned down, the more I believed I was getting closer to making it. A lot of people in Korea say that failure is the mother of success, so I believed that more times I failed, the more likely I was to succeed.

I don't see here on this side; but I will see on the other side. I know I'll get to see. I know I'll get to walk those golden streets and I'll get to see Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego; and I'll get to see the Lord. Oh yes I will.

I started using sunglasses in Alabama. I was going to do a show with Patsy Cline and Bobby Vee, and I left my clear glasses on the plane. I only had the sunshades, and I was quite embarrassed to go onstage with them, but I did it.

Share This Page