I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner... And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul... Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

People don't listen to one radio station. On iTunes you can mix different worlds and bring country and pop and folk and live music together with a mass audience. I could have sung 'Easy' in a country way but I just sang it how I sing. I think it's a really nice blend.

I love Lady Gaga, Rihanna - all the pop girls like Katy Perry. I think Miley Cyrus is very talented, too. Apart from the visuals, which you may like or not like, but her music is quite good, actually. 'Wrecking Ball' is quite a good song, and she sang it really nicely.

In high school, I was so painfully self-aware that how I thought of myself was probably very different from what other people thought of me. I thought of myself as just painfully awkward and dorky. I had a lot of hair and was kind of weird. I sang a lot in the hallways.

My dad took me for an audition once, to show me, 'OK, you want to be a child actor, this is what it's like.' I sang a folk song about donkeys on this West End stage with this big director, and there was a queue of 200 girls all singing 'Memory.' I was terrible. Terrible.

I went to watch Coldplay in Florida and saw Chris Martin before they went on. He sang 'What Makes You Beautiful' before the chorus of 'Yellow' kicked in. That was so strange because he's an inspiration for me. I think he's so good, he's sick... he's a really nice guy too.

If you watch Justin's early videos, I never let him say, 'My name is Justin Bieber,' and then start singing - he always just sang. And the reason I did that was I wanted you to feel like you were in the room. Or maybe you were seeing something you weren't supposed to see.

I grew up with singers. My father's mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can't remember a time there wasn't music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters - George Gershwin, Cole Porter - and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.

When people chat to me about my childhood and getting into horses, they're like, 'Was it like the birds sang and the sun came out? Was it an amazing experience?' I'm like, 'No, it was rubbish. I was frightened. I was pretty unbalanced, and most ponies took advantage of me.'

My mom was a professional. My dad and mom met each other in a movie called 'New Faces of 1937.' My mom went under the name Thelma Leeds, and she did a few movies, and she was really a great singer, and when she married my dad and started to have a family, she sang at parties.

When Armaan sang his first song for Vishal Dadlani, he didn't know that they were making Daboo Malik's son sing. He went inside the studio when he was 10-11, sang a scratch and it went on to be part of 'Bhoothnath.' He didn't get the opportunity because he was so and so's kid.

I got tired of seeing people rush through the national anthem so they could have their popcorn and get to the game. Nobody ever sang the anthem with soul. It was always done clinically and they always stuck to the original. I put feeling into it. I sang it in a soulful manner.

In high school, I had a wonderful teacher who, coincidentally also taught Meryl Streep before me. At the same time I had my own rock band, I played bass and sang. I was one of those kids who really enjoyed being with my friends and doing rather insane, but fun, creative things.

I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.

I still sing, but completely for my own pleasure. I play a nightclub singer in 'Sparkle,' but I'd like to pursue it a bit more. I sang at a friend's 60th at Claridge's the other month; I did 'Baby It's Cold Outside' with the actor Hilton McRae, and 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'

I always felt different because I didn't pick one specific clique or group to be a part of, and I didn't choose one thing to be. I cheered, sang in chorus, was in student government, played in rock bands, went to dirt races in western PA... My interests have always been diverse.

I went to this little performing arts school in downtown Phoenix. You had to dance or act, and everyone sang in choir. I started out playing the saxophone, but I always wanted to be in an orchestra. That was a dream as a kid, and there aren't a lot of saxophones in an orchestra.

One day, when I was still living at home, a friend told 'Texas' Jean Valli about me. She was originally from Syracuse, N.Y., and lived in New Jersey but sang country. One night, she had me come up on stage where she was performing. I sang 'My Mother's Eyes,' and she was knocked out.

I'm always thinking about songs and how I can sing a song that would resonate with my voice, my persona. I want it to be a pleasant experience that's not just about hearing my voice. I remember some singers whose voices were so pretty, it didn't matter what they sang - you loved it.

I concentrated on Rossini when I began, and I never really felt any competition. I sang in the best houses, and I believed I was always a first choice. I was lucky in a way - I never felt there was someone else who was getting the roles in another theatre and that we were competing.

Growing up, I didn't come from a musical family. Neither of my parents played an instrument, sang out loud, or listened to the radio with frequency. The record collection in the living room was only about 2 feet long - and that included 4 solid inches of Neil Diamond and Herb Alpert.

I had this one audition - I won't say the casting director's name, but she was on the phone the whole time I sang. I was literally doing my audition, and she was on the phone. So I guess whatever it is she was ordering for lunch was more important than the high C's I was belting out.

I advise wannabe singers to form a band, practise in your garage if you have to, but do as many charity or open mic shows as possible to get experience. I sang for seven years before getting a record deal, and I was already loving what I was doing. I just got lucky and got discovered.

My first go at drinking did not go so well. I ended up getting sick in front of everybody. You know that Ginuwine song 'Pony'? It was playing at the party while I was getting sick. My entire senior year, everyone sang that around me. For a year. I would like that erased from my memory.

My dad was a huge country music fan, but he also had a band and he sang. So he'd listen to a lot of music and the songs that he'd learn for the band were more from the male artists. So my earliest country memories were Waylon Jennings, Conway Twitty, George Jones, Johnny Paycheck even.

Everyone in the group sang when I joined them. That was one of the problems with L.T.D.: there was no focal point. It took until 1976, or about six or seven years, before I was put into the spotlight as a vocalist. That's when I recorded 'Love Ballad,' and it became a hit for the group.

We performed 'Road of Resistance' at O2 Academy Brixton in London for the first time in the fall of 2014. I still remember how the British audience sang this song with us although it was a world premiere. In other words, the song 'Road of Resistance' really propelled us to move forward.

The most scared I'd ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again... just singing one song, the national anthem.

Many times, people have come up to me after singing some songs, and they'd say, 'Richie, do you know what you did?' And I'd say, 'What?' And they'd go, 'I wrote these songs down for you to sing, and you sang them all in a row.' But that's the kind of communication that happens, you know.

I can still remember the afternoon, on my 15th birthday, when I opened up 'The Virgin and the Gypsy,' D.H. Lawrence's novella, in my tiny cell in boarding school, and whole worlds of possibility opened out that I had never guessed existed. The language was on fire and sang of liberation.

When I was a little bitty kid, I was listening to the stuff my parents were listening to. My mom was a huge Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige fan. My dad had a cover band that I sang with, and he loved Parliament, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, the blues, James Brown.

I always sang when I was little-bitty girl. I sang all the time. And then I'm from Knoxville, Tennessee, so I sang in a show at Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. You know, they have all those variety shows where Dollywood is. And I sang there and yodeled and clogged, but I never wrote my own songs.

I was singing doo-wop on the corner under the streetlight with four other guys when it wasn't called doo-wop. We just got together and sang, so that music is inside of me. It's a lot of stuff that has been rolling around in here and becoming this compost and has made me who I am as a singer.

On 'Sullivan,' you sang live. Not only that, you sang with a 40-piece band. So you had instruments that weren't even on the original record! So this was when the rubber met the road - when you had to really learn how to perform. And it was for 10 or 12 million people. So that was a challenge.

I was rejected for couple of adverts for sounding too sad. One was for Diet Coke, but it's a good thing it didn't happen because it probably would have been a big blight on my soul. It also happened with a fabric softener called Downy, and I guess the way I sang 'Only Downy' made people weep.

I got last-minute rush seats to Baz Luhrmann's 'Boheme,' and my favorite singer, Ekaterina Solovyeva, was playing Mimi that day. My face got burned off when she sang the aria 'Donde Lieta Usci.' The woman was technically sobbing and singing opera at the same time. I don't know how you do that.

When I was 12, I wrote a legit song - about having my heart broken, of course, because I was 12 years old going on 40. I sang the song for my mom, and she asked, 'Where did you get that song?' I told her I wrote it, and she said, 'Really?' She looked at my grandparents and just said, 'Oh, boy.'

I was born in Faridabad but brought up in Delhi and Mumbai. My father had been living hand-to-mouth and literally slept on railway platforms when he came to Mumbai for the first time to become a film singer. My parents were both singers; they sang together and fell in love due to their singing.

I went to work in a woman's home in Los Angeles as a mother's helper. I worked there about two years. Went to school with all rich kids. I was the only poor kid in the school, and I was already insecure. But my voice saved me because I sang in school, and I was real popular because of my voice.

I had - after I sang the 'Star Spangled Banner' so badly, after my tragic singing accident, after that, you know, all my stuff kind of, like, really got even more full blown and, you know, I got stage fright and, you know, I couldn't do stand-up anymore and let alone sing and all the other things.

Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel's song, which had lost its way and come on Earth, and sang on undyingly, smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds, and putting for the while an angel's nature into us.

My grandmother was a huge influence on me. She allowed me to be my flamboyant self as a kid. She babysat me; auditions came later - by later, I mean six years old. She sang and played piano, and I'd sit beside her. I don't know how confident I am, but I think you need it to survive in this industry.

I feel like I have to create the Keith Whitley sound. That doesn't mean I can't borrow from the people I grew up listening to, but it doesn't serve any purpose to sing the same kind of songs they sang. When you do that, it's going to come out sounding like an imitation, whether it's meant to or not.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs.

I just wanted to finally release something that sounded really fun, and 'Must Be Love' is that song! I'm telling you, I went to the Philippines and sang that live for everyone, and everyone was singing along, and I thought, 'Wow!' Everyone was singing this song back to me because everyone loves love.

For me, the moment the mic is on and it's rolling, it's impossible to vocally relax for some reason. But one day, I'm going to be able to sing the way I sang when I was a little kid, completely open and free. That's, I think, the one thing that's changed: Growing older, I'm not ashamed to hear my voice.

When I was eight, my mum found me humming to myself and scribbling on a scrap of paper. When she asked me what I was doing, I got shy. I was writing a Christmas song, and I had never shared my music with anyone before. Reluctantly, I sang it for her... and she loved it. Of course she did - she's my mum.

The piano has disappeared from working-class family life, which is a shame. It's associated with the middle classes now. Everyone in my family sang and played piano, but my parents were delighted and amazed when I became the first professional performer in the family - apart from a clog-dancer way back.

For a while, I thought I would maybe be a writer. But with music, I was such a nerd; I was really obsessive about it. The problem was I couldn't really sing. I think one day I sang from a different part of my body, from my gut for the first time, and I was like, 'Oh! That's how you're supposed to do it.'

I've never really focused on if I had good habits when I sang or if I had bad habits, or if I was breathing correctly. So, I started doing vocal exercises and would stretch out before I sang, stuff to help my breathing. It's funny, you breathe your whole life then you find out you're not doing it correctly.

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