The music industry is something that I'm still trying to understand. With acting, I've been doing it for so long that I understand every aspect of it for the most part - there are obviously still more aspects that I need to learn - but I have a grasp on it. With music, I'm still learning. I'm still getting used to it.
It's Frank's painting on the cover. We were originally going to use a Salvador Dali painting that we got permission from Salvador Dali to use, and Frank found this one, and it really did fit the music much more.
I wanted to look at the mentality that can breed that sort of intensity, that kind of cutthroat, pressure-cooker feeling, especially a form of music like jazz, that should be - or you'd think should be - all about liberation and improvisation and everything.
In college, I faced an interesting problem. I wanted to play music all the time and yet I wasn't ready for anyone to hear it. To remedy this, I took to retreating to stairwells as a safe place to sing and write music. It was there that I wrote most of my songs in college and really grew into an artist.
Hip hop is usually a bunch of guys talking to a bunch of guys, in my experience. It's homosocial, not homosexual, in that it's almost always all one gender in a room where it's being created. That locker-room environment has an impact on the language. I think the music suffers 'cause it allows an almost cartoonish level of misogyny.
I'm 19, I'm a girl, I'm very young, I like all sorts of different things, I like all sorts of different styles of music, I like all sorts of different styles of clothes, I like all sorts of different colors of hair.
Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.
I didn't realize until I was older what a huge music fan my daddy really was, and actually that my grandma played banjo at one time, and I didn't even know that until a year or two ago.
If you tell a kid, 'You've got to pick music or Instagram,' they're not picking music.
I actually have a degree in music and was aware that music was a tool used in therapy. I didn't realize how far it had come since I was in college in the mid-seventies.
Tap dancing is like... it's equivalent to music, not only for the African American community, but also for the world. Tap dancing is like language; it's like air: it's like everything else that we need in order to survive. I'm blessed and honored to be knowledgeable of the art form and to be a part of the art form.
Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy.
If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.
When you are real in your music, people know it and they feel your authenticity.
I'd play music on the street, especially in developing nations where a lot of kids couldn't wear shoes. In order to relate with kids that would be following me barefoot, I would take off my shoes, and they would all laugh at me because I couldn't go three steps without wincing.
I have about 100 gigs of music, and I'm always going through thinking about what song I can match to a scene and all that.
The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.
Music is so huge to soccer, to my life, to working out. I usually have headphones when I'm cleaning the house or making dinner.
Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record.
I am so blessed that all I've done in my professional life, since I was 17-18, is play music and somehow make a dollar here and there.
That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.
We spent a lot of time on that record with the sound and recorded it on the Paramount sound stage which is this huge room where the sound is reflected but the reflection is so late and comes from so far away that it doesn't blur the music but gives you a room nonetheless.
When you are a journalist in the music business, as I was, you end up dying or going to the gym - I chose the gym.
Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
I do like what Alicia Keys and John Legend are doing. With their music, you keep your clothes on.
'Runaround Sue' was a big record for me, as well as the music video for it.
He's a world-famous name to people who care about his music, but there are many people who have never heard of George Gershwin and those numbers increase.
I'd like a male to listen to my music and find it kind of fascinating, what a girl goes through when they get heartbroken or get sad or get hurt by something.
Inaudible prayers, particularly of the Canon, which at first don't seem to have anything to do with music, end up being a very important part of the aesthetic of the traditional structure of the Mass.
The music is the message, the message is the music. So that's my little ministry that the Big Man upstairs gave to me - a little ministry called love and happiness.
I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
I used to watch those rock videos where they would chainsaw the piano. And I thought, 'That's what I want to do.' I thought classical music was corny.
Everyone has their own path in life, no matter if it's being a celebrity or a singer. Quite frankly, I didn't move to Nashville and tell myself I wanted to be a singer because I wanted to be a celebrity or I wanted to be somebody that people admired. I wasn't about that. I just loved music.
Music is not a commodity, it's a resource.
I start the day off with a pot of coffee, and I read all the newspapers online, then I delve around for new music.
Painting is just a hobby. I really don't think of it much more than that. But writing music and writing words... my life would feel as if it had a big hole if I took those away.
