To me, the appeal of opera lies in the fact that a myriad of singers and instruments, each possessed of different qualities of voice and sound, against the backdrop of a grand stage and beautiful costumes, come together in one complete and impressive drama.
Everybody I've ever seen live sings out of tune, even the greatest singers in the world. And of course if you make a single nowadays, they'll autotune it anyway.
A lot of the new people they choose on shows like 'American Idol' and things like that - I don't ever hear lead singers. They always seem to choose to pick people that are great singers, fabulous singers, but they've never got the voice that makes a great lead singer.
Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I've talked to like the record.
Ian and Sylvia, who, when you got right down to it, were essentially country and western singers. I just recorded his Four Strong Winds. It's a wonderful song.
I like Adele, Mika, Natacha Atlas and a beautiful old record, 'An Evening with Belafonte/Mouskouri,' starring Harry Belafonte and Nana Mouskouri. What they have in common is they all have incredible voices. I am very much into voices. I would say I'm a fan of voices, not of sound. I'm a fan of singers, not of bands.
I have the background singers of Ray Charles, the background singers of Smokey Robinson, and the background singers of Barry White and I built a choir around that.
I love singers like Hayley Williams from Paramore and Amy Lee from Evanescence.
In my vocal, I think you can hear something of my earlier times when I'd sing in subway halls for the echo and perform doo-wop on street corners. But I had a lot of influences, too - singers like Sam Cooke, Brook Benton and Roy Hamilton.
The real mariachis in Mexico are singers like Agustin Lara and Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete - the Golden Era of Mexican Filmmaking. Mariachis sing very soft and very beautiful. That's old-school mariachi. They are caressing the songs.
Women are a key part of the sound of the groups that accompany male singers like Kirk Franklin, Israel Houghton, and myself.
God uses singers in a mighty way, and I am grateful.
The voice muscle doesn't last forever. I have a lot of friends who are classical and opera singers. My friend Beverly Sills stopped singing in her 50s, so I'm careful with mine. But I'll keep going as long as it lets me.
Usually, certainly British singers, adopt an American accent when they sing and I think that usually people are thinking of somebody else, but I just think of very specific people.
The way I see it, my blood, sweat, and tears are not just for me; it's for Fifth Harmony as well. We have been blessed. Most groups have lead singers, but we don't.
I'm a big Johnny Cash girl. And I love singers like Laura Marling and Joanna Newsom.
I don't think I'm turning back the clock by doing these old tunes. I love rock and roll and popular music. It's just that the spirits of the singers whose songs I do are living within me. That's why the songs come out in the voices of the original singers. I'm not doing imitations. That's the way they sound inside me.
It often seemed like we had become a nation where the only heroes were rock singers and ball players and that there were no large men of probity who could be called upon for the task.
In our country, singers are known as the voice of actors.
There are so many soulful singers, even the ones coming from London, like Adele and Jessie J, who are just amazing. It feels like a really cool time to be making music now.
I was 25 myself once. I also thought I knew everything. I also thought that I could give singers singing advice and comics comedy advice. When you're that age, you know it all, so I understand it. But when you're tired and you don't have patience for it, you definitely snap.
For a producer, you want to be in L.A. You want to be close to the action, and in L.A. there are always singers, artists, songwriters, collaborators and other producers. It's easy to get access to all that, which gives you more opportunity to work records.
My mother was a singer, and both of her sisters were singers. There was always music around.
And the thing that I always tried to do with important singers when I met them was to sit down and record everything they knew, give them a first real run-through of their art.
I believe I became one of the first singers to be launched via television exposure. I guess I was a new kind of musical stylist for a new kind of media.
People think top singers are overpaid, but opera houses have a top fee, which is a good thing. Of course concerts are different- everyone wants to make as much money as possible.
He was a manager, one of the singers, I guess talent coordinator for the local talent in Harlem. His name was Lover Patterson. He was living right across the street from where my dad had his restaurant. I guess he saw a lot of kids come in, a lot of my buddies.
I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to.
My father had lived in the States in the 1960s for a while and came to love American Songbook material. Even today, he sometimes recognizes singers that I never even heard of, which is beautiful and inspiring.
The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.
I get along with all the women singers, but especially Dolly Parton. We talk the same hillbilly language.
I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.
Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.
I come from a school of people, folk singers, and the tradition there is troubadours, and you're carrying a message. Now admittedly, our job is partly just to make you boogie, just make you want to dance. Part of our job is to take you on a little voyage, tell you a story.
There are many singers who have got an exceptional talent, but spend their lives singing in local trains or hotels. Does the country even know who they are? Music in India is restricted only to Bollywood. Whoever manages to make a mark there is remembered. The ones who fail to reach and make it big there are forgotten.
I want to lead the pack in the process of making Indian singers bigger than actors internationally.