I really do love bluesy-jazzy music, so I love Etta James, B.B. King and Billie Holiday. I love that they have soul in their voices - I think that's something important is having.
I was always good at music.
With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things.
I think a lot of people came into rock n' roll to try to change the world. I came into rock n' roll to make music.
The biggest musical influence on me was my mum. We were both enraptured by music.
I don't really plan to be a pop star; I just want to be able to make music without the whole My Dad thing hanging over me, which everyone in my position goes through.
I think it's because Toronto is the Gothenburg of Canada, with the trends and the music and everything. I feel very at home when I'm there. Everyone has always been so kind to me.
'Close to the Edge' is the album where we first attempted to do the extra-long-form piece of music, having one song taking up the whole side of a piece of vinyl.
When you do a 'messa di voce,' that means you start soft, you crescendo into loud - and then you go back to soft again. Some people call it circus tricks, but in bel canto, it's really written into the music.
Honestly, I don't listen to nobody else's music but my own. It's kind of like sports to me. You don't see Kobe Bryant at a LeBron James game - he just works on his own game. And that's what I do. I only listen to me, so I can criticize and analyze and all those things.
I don't care what people say about my relationship; I don't care what they say about my boobs. People are buying my songs; I have a sold-out tour. I'm getting incredible feedback from my music.
I grew up singing. My mother was a music teacher.
I don't see music as working.
The problem of the Panthers is that they scared people. The music of N.W.A didn't scare people; it taught people what it was like to grow up in our inner cities.
I learned at an early age that I was given something special when I was born, and that was the gift of music.
It's a music video but she was real specific on the character that Mary J. Blige was playing, and that I was playing in this video and I told her whenever you get to jump to the big screen I'd love to come with you and she honored that.
Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It's just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions.
I am quite certain in my heart of hearts that modern music and modern art is not a conspiracy, but is a form of truth and integrity for those who practise it honestly, decently and with all their being.
I've been around a long time, and when I was at the top of the hill, I was very ahead of my time! Evidence of that is that my music is still current today - you know, rappers sample it all the time. So, rather than compromise my artistic integrity, I concentrated on movies.
I'm not so much into the beats. I'm more into the spiritual side of the music.
Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred.
Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.
I always knew, that in some way, I'd be connected to, and involved in, the music business.
I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.
But at this phase of my life, I want to write and not have to think about whether a song is going to be a hit. I want to explore the music that inspires me, and I don't want to ape myself.
I've learned how much of an impact that music has on people. I get messages all the time from people telling me what my music means to them and what it has done to them.
I'm asked so many times why I think there aren't more female instrumentalists in jazz. But I never think about it. And I don't think it's been any harder for me to be taken seriously. The music speaks for itself.
Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you'll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music.
Writing music is just something that I was born to do.
I am a classical music lover - not necessarily the contemporary stuff, but the old stuff.
Today, not to take away from any of the present artists, but music has gotten a little shallow, in my opinion. Everybody's talking about the same thing: sex, money, clothes, cheating... I want to open up not necessarily better conversations, but, in my opinion, more important ones, and touch on things that are actually going on.
I didn't get into music to become a blues musician, or a country musician. I'm a singer-songwriter. In my book that means I get to do whatever I want.
You can be a sex symbol through music or film. Hey, there are some politicians that are sex symbols. Is that something you should fight? No. Sex is very natural.
Ironically, being a coach on 'The Voice' and spending time with those kids, Xenia and Dia especially, I learned a lot about myself. It reminded me how lucky I am that this happened for me, and it kind of lit the spark inside me again for my love of music.
Because of this high status of the object in our culture, something has to be a thing. Live efforts are almost marginal. I think dance, for example, is just as much a thing, and I want for it to have the same status. I don't want it to be the thing that comes in the evening and is, like, the happy music.
The reasons why I left were to do with my interest in Buddhism. There were experiences over a period of about six months which caused me to decide to give up music, so one morning I felt I had to go to E.G. Management and tell them.
