I used to babysit. And the kids I babysat were huge Hilary Duff fans, and so we used to have dance parties every day to her music. So I am very familiar with the albums of Miss Hilary Duff.
But the idea of taking things and mixing them together is what I do in my music. I take hip-hop, R&B, pop, dance, funk and soul and mix it all together to get my own sound.
'Dance to the Music' was just Sly Stone being his natural crazy self right from the beginning. The man was an original and his first AM hit was nothing if it wasn't the example per excellence of the Sly Stone music machine.
I went to my first drum n' bass rave when I was 16 and remember being terrified. Looking around, trying to figure out how to dance to this music, watching some girl in some hot pants, trying little ways to learn her movements.
Adaptability is crucial to working on Glee because every day is adapting to something. Because we're doing a different genre of music, doing a different type of scene with a different scene partner, recording and dance rehearsals... no day is like an...
I think people look at dance music and see it as kind of a bad thing, and bad people hang out in nightclubs, but it never felt that way for me. Growing up in Chicago, music was the thing that saved me, that kept me on the straight and narrow.
When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music.
Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.
The thought of bringing a cake into a dance music show is a bizarre one. The idea of rafting on top of people is just as bizarre as well. And I think whenever something bizarre comes into play, it immediately becomes an easy target. And for those rea...
I have periods where I listen to regular rap, Jay-Z, Eminem and Lil Wayne. The next day I might have some Christian alternative music. The next day I have on some dance music. It all varies what I listen to.
I don't think my vocals demand effects. I like reverb to a certain extent, but I don't want to hide my voice. I like stripped-down vocals, but I also like crazy, powerful, doubled vocals like in dance or electronic music.
I always tell the adults at my dance school, 'Men, you are going to have to do something that you are absolutely not used to: you have got to take command and be the boss.' Because - and this is just an observation - women get their way.
[addressing the shocked expressions at the dance after playing a wild heavy metal guitar solo] Marty McFly: I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it.
Carmen Sternwood: You're cute. I like you. Philip Marlowe: Yeah, what you sees nothing, I got a Balinese dancing girl tattooed across my chest.
I've been playing golf as long as I've been dancing, since I was 13 or 14. I play off six. I like to get out on a golf course as often as I can.
I don't like the Samba; it's nonsense. With a lot of these Latin dances I can't really understand what they're all about. I like the Rumba and the Paso Doble but the others I could take or leave.
When I was growing up, I cheered and danced and ran and stuff like that. I'm probably thinner now than I was in high school. I had a lot of muscle - a lot of muscle in high school.
There are female artists I can look at that I find more in common with than the male artists, because they're blending the pop, dance and theatricality... but currently there aren't a lot of guys who go there.
The first question is always, 'We loved him on 'Dancing with the Stars,' we loved him in the Olympics, but can he speak English?' Yes I speak English. Yes, I can.
I enjoy load shedding in Nepal, when it allows me to witness the dancing of fireflies in the next field, and at the same time to hear children playing a chanting clapping game because there is no TV to waste their time on.
I grew up next to the ocean, on the coast, and would dance the salsa all day, so I just learned those rhythms and knew how to move my body when I was very little.
