Everybody is under pressure to shut up and sing.
I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'
I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.
I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing.
With technology now, you can go in and sing a song, and for $100,000, you will sound flawless.
I love people and I love to sing, and that's what keeps me going.
I would like to sing the theme tune of a big film - something like 'Titanic.'
I decided to sing again after settling in Newark in 1982. I had a burning desire to sing and lots of encouragement from my new wife, Earlene.
I still sing because I love the sound of applause, because it's who I am, and because I still can.
I definitely I prefer to sing in the car. I don't sing in the shower, maybe its because that's the one time I don't need to talk to anyone so I should just shut up, otherwise I'm just, you know, jibber jabber.
I never really focus on writing for other people, to be honest. Every song I've ever written was for me to sing. Maybe if I'm writing for a rapper, but I'd still write it as though it was for myself and then sometimes I'm actually asked to do the part.
I'd been auditioning for parts for years. I never got any better at it. I'm crap at auditions. I know there are people who can walk into those rooms and make those lines sing on the page and get the job immediately. I wasn't one of them. I'm still not one of them.
When we play 'Angel of Death', it's actually a 2 and half minutes sing 'til our party starts. That song is pretty much been played traditionally in the end.
But nowadays hymns are the norm, because people don't have much else to sing.
Music is fun, but I'm an ice skater. I may sing songs and do shows, make movies and other things... that's all well and good and I enjoy it, and I would never trade any of those for anything. But figure skating is who I am.
To draw you must close your eyes and sing.
I don't write lyrics. I hear the track and sing in gibberish over it, then I try and fit words into the phrasing and melody that I already have set. Everything is left to chance.
One of the fun things about playing live is watching the audience sing the songs back to us.
I was homeless and I was in San Diego and I started singing in a local coffee shop and people started coming to hear me sing.
I once said a poet has the right to sing as loudly and vocally as he wants to. Most poets should face a rock n' roll audience for one night to keep them honest.
I would love to do a collaboration with Lil' Wayne. I would have loved to sing on his song, 'How To Love.' I wanted to do the remix to that song really bad.
Even though there's no forum for me on the radio for the kind of music I sing anymore, I am still excited about having a career where I can sing the best music in the world, and people will come and hear me because of the hit records I've had in the past.
Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out.
At only 20 years old I got married. I was still a kid myself, but in those times, if you got someone pregnant, you had no choice but to get married. So I left school and the only thing I could do was sing.
I didn't really have an act per se - a theatrical performance, as opposed to just: here I am, folks, and you're all supposed to be dead quiet while I sing eight or nine songs, then get off the stage.
I am not playing on stage. I am living the situation. I cannot cut emotions and sing. I never save myself.
My high-school a cappella teacher would embarrass me in front of the choir. 'Mavis, you're in the basement. Mavis, you're singing with the boys.' I said, 'Mr. Finch, my voice isn't soprano. I can't sing up there with the girls.' So I just got out of the choir.
God bless Ray Charles. It was such an honor to meet him and sing with him and actually just to watch him sing from just two feet away.
Sing your heart out and write the best song you possible can.
If anyone will listen I will continue to sing.
I have no musical talent at all. I was banned from music classes and told I would never be able to understand anything. I still don't think I can sing, but somehow I get away with it.
Comics, for me, is being able to sing alone in the shower. I find it freeing. You just pick up a pen and get to it.
We all sing about the things we're thinking; musicals are about expressing those emotions that you can't talk about. It works a real treat.
Why is it that the hot chicks never can sing?
I love 'Some Enchanted Evening', and 'If I Loved You'. And as I sing them more and more, I find new favorites.
My life is to sing.
