On 'Idol,' you have to show off your vocal abilities, so I stuck to the ballads, so I'm glad my first single is 'Tonight' so I can show off my fun, young side, and what I want to do as an artist.
As soon as you get off stage, that's the most dangerous time for a singer to kiss people because your vocal chords are receptive to any kind of germ.
And I've had vocal training on and off for years.
There is one thing I should say, and it's important: Young Broadway singers and anybody who is an orator of any kind - lawyers who have to speak in court or pastors or anyone who has a lot of stress on their vocal cords: You should do the maintenance. You should do whatever it takes to feel fresh and good.
There were a whole lot, I bought every blues record I could find, it wasn't just one or two people. My vocal influences were Ray Charles and Bobby Blue Bland.
But my role is to just apply the skills I've learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere.
James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together.
I started my career at 'Star Trek,' and that had a huge, very vocal fan base.
Even if the production doesn't feel African, the vocal delivery - singing through your nose. Specifically, Highlife music from Nigeria. That was the first music I ever heard as a child. So singing through my nose is something I do often, and that's directly rooted in my heritage.
When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it's always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument - everybody does it a little bit different - singing maybe even more so.
And singing is a physical thing - your vocal cords are these muscles.
A vocal producer is very important, and it's a very important component of an overall successful and good-sounding record.
Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers.
I'm not really afraid of somebody who's very politically vocal. My mother is very strong, and I really believe in freedom of speech.
Harmonies come really naturally to me. I don't have to labor too hard over them. I'll sing a lead vocal, and then I will immediately have all of these other ideas for vocal harmonies. I think that some of the most fun parts of recording, for me, are the vocal harmonies.
When I'm alone at home, I really prefer to listen to Wagner's orchestral music rather than any vocal music. I find it illuminating not to have to pay attention to voices in the recordings.
If even in science there is no a way of judging a theory but by assessing the number, faith and vocal energy of its supporters, then this must be even more so in the social sciences: truth lies in power.
I leave for the show at least an hour ahead, and I do some vocal warm-ups, and that's pretty much it.
Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.
You don't always have to be a leader and be as vocal as I am. I'm sure some people would love it if I didn't talk as much as I did.
The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.
If you actually relax your vocal cords they actually work better.
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.
'Boneless,' even though we were thinking about servicing it to radio, it made more sense putting a vocal on there. This was actually the first time that I really looked at doing a song for radio and kind of let go of some control and listened to a lot of different radio pluggers and had Ultra come in and help out with ideas.
I was very young at the time, and I mainly appreciated their vocal qualities, even though I was already living as they did - as black performers in a white world.
I would start seeing, in just the sense I was saying now, the kind of record it was going to be and what the arrangement demands, and what my vocal part should be in the record. This was all emerging as the song was emerging.
I never took any vocal training.
In every song, there is a vocal element that doesn't have any words. I wanted to play around with how emotive and expressive my voice could be.
For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.
Being onstage is like being rock star. Whereas if you're doing a movie, it's such a confined space. You know, you do a comedy, it's so hard, too, 'cause with a comedy, there's no vocal reaction, there's no energy that you get back that spurs you on to be funnier because everyone has to be quiet.
It's always a pleasure when you can compose guitar parts from a strong vocal and not just put the melody on top of guitar riffs.
I was very vocal about what I wanted to do at a very young age. I wanted to be inside of the television set. I didn't know being on TV was being an actor.
It is simple nonsense to speak of the fixed tempo of any particular vocal phrase. Each voice has its peculiarities.
I'm very much in favor of vaccinations, and I've been very vocal about that because it's insane to forgo this.
Van Morrison is probably, at this point in time, my biggest influence as a vocalist. When we were making our last album I had a vinyl copy of 'Veedon Fleece' in the vocal booth in front of me, in the dorky sense. I think there were candles around, which is really tacky, but hey, I needed to channel Van the Man!
I'm sure any vocal teacher that listens to me would rather cut my throat than do anything - I do everything all wrong - but I think for me that's the best - because I don't think I have a voice so I think what I project would be style - if I learned to sing I'd lose my style.
