I love Broadway. And, I listen to country music, which I think a lot of people find surprising.
If I wanted to be a pop singer, I would have done that 20 years ago. I love country music.
I started hitching about the country when I was 16 or 17 years old. I found the music that was played around the country - Irish music - had a particular resonance.
What we don't need in country music is divisiveness, public criticism of each other, and some arbitrary judgement of what belongs and what doesn't.
If you talk bad about country music, it's like saying bad things about my momma. Them's fightin' words.
I'm nowhere with country music. I don't hear much of it, so I shouldn't venture an opinion, but when it finds me, it seems formulaic.
I definitely listened to country music. I don't think I listened to hair bands as much as I did Bruce Springsteen and U2 and Aerosmith.
In country music, there are certain female artists, like Gretchen Wilson, where you're going to find lesbians because they're responding to that more aggressive side.
But in those days - in the mid-'50s, early '60s - there was less than 300 radio stations that were playing country music and a lot of that wasn't full time.
When I hear bluegrass today, I hear so many new sounds in it. It's almost like country music in a way.
I don't mind putting my heart out there for the audience, and for the country music fans... to be vulnerable with them... that's my job as an artist.
I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad.
It doesn't matter if you stick the name 'bluegrass' on it. I think people call things bluegrass that I wouldn't necessarily call bluegrass, but what they're calling country music today I'm not sure that I would call country music. But I love music an...
I've known from a very early age that singing was what I was supposed to do. There was this unmistaken, undeniable passion within me to sing country music.
When I had my television show, 'Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters,' it was my high hope to convert people to country music. It is wonderful and contagious!
Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country - this music contained the real history of the people of this country.
When your dad is a country music fan and you take long car trips, you become one too.
I love Nashville. It's such a great town, and I'm a huge country music fan. That's what I listen to on the radio in the car.
My definition of country music is really pretty simple. It's when someone sings about their life and what they know, from an authentic place.
I love country music, blues, and punk, and one day I might make those kinds of records.
Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.
