I was a singing disc jockey who heard every type of music there was - and loved it all.
Singing is how I express everything. Hunger, needing new clothes... it's all through song.
I don't have a terrible singing voice, but I also wouldn't call it 'good.' I can carry a tune.
I came from being a singer going into jazz. And that's one of the things that polio did for me is it took away my ability to sing with a range because it paralyzed my vocal chords, so that was when I started playing. But I hear the music as if I were singing even when I am playing.
I'd stand on the side of the road when I was just a little girl singing on trash cans.
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 first started singing - before 'Treat Me Like Fire' when I was working with a vocal coach - I realized that I wasn't even breathing when I was singing.
I wanted to be Cher for a long time, but not for the singing. I just thought she was so cool. I wanted her long hair, and I wanted to weigh five pounds.
The first show I ever did, singing and dancing, was 'Beauty and the Beast.' I was playing Gaston. Gaston has red tights, knee high boots, and it's very physical. I had headaches every day for two months.
For 'For Real,' where I play a singer who has to give up her passion for her husband and family, I practised singing for hours, in bathroom, in subways, though I am tone deaf.
If I wasn't singing country music for a living, I was actually going to school to be a doctor.
I just like to switch things up all the time. Like when it comes to singing, I try to find a different character for each song.
I always wanted to sing. I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know how to make the singing thing happen.
I love being in a room in front of an audience who cares about the music, who knows the music, and who has lived with the music. It's kind of like an experience you share. I'm on stage performing it, but they're singing the words, too.
When I was in New York, I put together a show; I put together this really great band and performed at this place called Littlefield in Brooklyn. It was really fun. I did, like, 10 standards, and then I just hopped around different bars like Mona's and different jazz clubs in New York just singing because I know all the standards so well.
I was backstage at the House of Blues in L.A where I was about to perform, and Stevie Wonder and Prince turned up at my dressing room together! Stevie started beat boxing and Prince started singing one of my songs, all of a sudden it was like I was in a cypher with these incredible artists.
That's the thing that we said about the horn before: it's a focus issue. It's like a singer versus a drummer. If a drummer's playing a drum beat, and a singer starts singing, what do you think the audience is going to do?
A lot of people when they try to sing Skid Row songs, they're screaming and yelling too much. It's more singing than screaming.
I want to be singing to everybody, and I want everybody to think that I'm singing to them. Guys, girls and everyone in between.
I was kind of a bully, even though I'm tiny, 5' 2". As a child, I'd boss other kids around and dress my little brother up, just putting on shows, singing and dressing up.
I knew Sinatra for 38 years. He was like my father. Frank Sinatra was my 'dad.' He treated me like his son. He gave me the best advice about singing, about this and that... He was a very sensitive man, very astute, one of the sharpest men that I ever met in my life.
I do not understand where the idea came from that opera is only for privileged people, I am as happy singing before 70,000 people at the Millennium Stadium, as I am in front of a few hundred in a small concert hall.
My singing led into acting, and that is how I discovered acting.
Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it.
There's something about being onstage, singing my lyrics to somebody and them either listening and receiving them, or singing them back to me, that I just can't get enough of.
I really enjoy singing and I really enjoy acting, but singing I've been doing since I was really young.
Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.
I love singing just for my own benefit.
I also wanted to make a record that was about other things than romance, yeah, after two years on the road singing all the songs from the first album, I got kind of tired of that.
It used to be that film stars didn't want to do TV, and actors weren't singing, and singers weren't acting. Everybody's kind of crossing over to whatever they want to do. So I feel like, if you have it, use it. If God's given you this talent, then use it.
Singing is something I love to do. I feel very confident doing it.
I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.
With a track like 'White Christmas,' everybody has done that song in every format you can imagine, so I just looked at the chords at that particular song and what chords would make it work. That's kind of quite a sad song, and I had this idea of someone singing it in the subway, someone who is homeless, old and sad.
I think my songs are singing to the rural heart. It's not whether you're from a big city or the middle of nowhere in a small town.
I started singing at age five and haven't stopped since.
Singing harmony is not the same as singing a part in a choral group, where you know you're going to have to hit this note and then that note. There are nuances that change every day. Maybe today you have a slight cold or voice fatigue, or you've done something and there's a slight difference in your breathing.
