My favorite type of music to sing and to listen to, you know, rock. It's not always metal, but you know, half the time it is. Metal's cool, you know? Not everybody on 'American Idol' listens to metal.
In the long, nonillustrious history of white people pilfering African American culture, have I just perpetrated that? I'm motivated by a love for the music and by a love of the performances, and I really hope I haven't done anything bad.
Most boys' first hero is their father. That was definitely true of my dad. He was a proud Irish American and he taught me a lot about ethics and responsibility. He also introduced me to a lot of wonderful folk music.
But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.
If you don't have any ties to the music industry, you just love 'American Idol,' you can sit there and do exactly what you do in your living room, which is stare at them and judge them.
I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.
I had no intention of becoming a performer, and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold. If divine powers hadn't intervened, I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law.
Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.
The first concert that my parents took me to was in this canyon in Saudi Arabia called Buttermilk Canyon. You sleep under the stars in the desert, and ex-pats - German, Swiss, Canadian, American - would play classical music that filled the whole cany...
I love music, I make films with music, I eat with music, I sleep with music, I think with music. Music makes me dream; it strengthens my creativity.
When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.
The music industry isn't converging toward dance music. Dance music is dance music. It's been around since disco - and way before disco. But there's different versions of dance music.
I listen to all kinds of music - new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.
I listen to a lot of alternative types of music: I listen to a lot of Chinese music, I listen to a lot of Asian music. It might surprise you, but I listen to a lot of Arabic music. And I don't care - music is music.
I am a confused Musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back to music - except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who kn...
When I listen to music today, it is about 99 percent classical. I rarely even listen to folk music, the music of my own specialty, because folk music is to me more limited than classical music.
I love rock music, I love country music - I love all music, let's be honest!
Dream Song: As my eyes Search the prairie, I feel the summer in the spring. Whenever I pause The noise Of the village.
We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.
My granddad was an evangelist, and my grandma, she was as tough as nails. She watched 'American Bandstand' every day when she was in her 80s, 90s. She loved rock music. I never had anyone in my family that was anti-rock n' roll.
You know, every country needs another country to mock, and Australians seem to be pretty good at impersonating American people. Maybe it's because all the movies and music and TV you see there is from America, so we just have the knack for it.
