Ringo Starr may not have much of a voice, but when he sang a song on a Beatle album, it had its own special charm.
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 think it was when I was 12 when I entered a singing competition. I sang my own original song for an audience of 1,000 people.
I always sang in school choirs and went on tours to other countries. I have always loved it. It's a very communal thing, and you really connect with people.
I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience.
I disoriented myself from everything about being a human being and just played and played and played and sang and sang and sang.
I just sang at first - I didn't ever play guitar before The Kills.
After college, rather than pursue real work, I joined a folk group and sang in coffee houses and nightclubs, an occupation that does little for the intellect and even less for the complexion.
Like civil-rights protesters who sang rousing hymns as they were carried off to jail, Twitterers are bearing witness to what's happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I'm here. You're here, too. We are present.
I'm proud to say I was part of a movement in which we sang 'All You Need Is Love' at political rallies.
The first time I went on stage as an adult was touring with the Johnny Cash Show. I'd sang as a child. But my grown-up initiation was as part of that band.
I'll tell you, my dad played and sang, and it didn't take me long to figure out that playing a guitar was a whole lot better than getting ahold of a hoe handle or chopping cotton, man.
My mother did play classical piano, not that well. And actually, my father sang with the big bands - he sang with Bob Crosby's band - but he had to give up show business when his father died. He had to come back to Montgomery and take over the furniture store.
The idea of a new hero for a new day sang to me.
I grew up in the era of Britney Spears, where artists had songs written for them, and you got up and sang them. That's how I always thought it was.
Guys in slavery sang praises to the Lord to deliver them from bondage.
Whenever I sang, I said to myself, 'Maybe tonight.' I would never let down, no matter how few people were listening.
I never really sang for anyone, apart from in the shower or with my best friend. I was shy. I didn't want to take voice lessons. I knew I could sing, but I just didn't tell anyone.
The New York that Frank Sinatra sang about, people will never know that place. The New Orleans that Louis Armstrong sang about is the New Orleans that's still there - it's preserved.
When I was eight, my piano teacher played seven or eight notes, and I sang them. She stopped and looked at me in shock! That was the first time I'd gotten that reaction. I'd had looks of horror, but never shock in a positive way.
When I first started writing songs, I never intended on singing. I didn't really consider myself a singer at all. I was just kind of recording the demo vocals as a holding place until someone else came and sang.
There were a lot of lyrics that I sang but didn't understand. But I had this facade in performance of looking like I wrote the book.
I grew up listening to so many different things, and having a dad that also sang, music was innately born into me. Going through high school and college, I'd go see anyone who came to town, it didn't matter the genre.
My first song was 'So Sick,' which was my first number one as an artist, and I turned the mic around to the crowd, and they sang the whole song. Every lyric. That was my first experience with the power of music.
I always did plays. When I was in kindergarten, I got chosen to be Alvin in 'The Chipmunks.' We did a Chipmunks song. I was always a natural performer. It was easy for me. I danced and I sang, and all that stuff. I felt like I'd be something in the arts, but it vacillated between being a dancer and a singer, or whatever.
Few of us boggle - though we should - at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with similar panache, or that Leonard Bernstein and Benjamin Britten were equally adept as composers, conductors and pianists.
I used to be someone that needed nine hours of sleep; otherwise, I didn't think I was going to sound good when I sang, and I was very disciplined and anal about my preparation. When you become a parent, there just isn't that time, you know?
I thought I sang - it's OK - it's so hard to sing! Singing - I had no idea. I'd get fatigued at the end of a phrase - the amount of respect I have for singers!
When I sang my father's songs in concert, that was all people wanted to hear. I was always asking myself, 'Can I measure up?'
As a child singer, I never sang a single track for my father or uncle.
There is no real agreement among scholars as to whether Homer and Hesiod were contemporaries or whether Homer came a hundred or so years later or earlier. How could there be, given that both poets recited and sang in an oral culture.
As a boy soprano in the high school choir, I later sang a solo during the carol service at Canterbury Cathedral, but I was too young to secure the Freddy Eynsford-Hill role in our production of 'My Fair Lady' - and far too timid to have thought to audition for it.
I even sang once at the opening of a supermarket. You name it, I've done it.
All the Jewish tradition I had came from my grandmother, who grew up in Palestine and eloped with my grandfather and went to New York. She lived very close to us until she died when I was around 20. She sang a lot of songs, led the Passover seders. It was a very rich part of my life, and my grandmother was a big part of my life.
The first time I sang in church, when I was ten, the applause was so overwhelming that I started to weep. My mum had to rescue me from the stage.
People often ask me why I sing with a strong Irish accent. I suppose when I was five years old, I spoke with a strong Irish accent, so I sang with one, too.
