I'd play music on the street, especially in developing nations where a lot of kids couldn't wear shoes. In order to relate with kids that would be following me barefoot, I would take off my shoes, and they would all laugh at me because I couldn't go ...
I had always loved cartoons, especially 'Bugs Bunny,' and I found I enjoyed making animated films. Even a 30-second commercial involved drawing and painting, storytelling, not to mention actors, music, and sound effects.
Let's say music is needed for only 43 seconds of film. You have to score it so it is an entity, so it won't bother anyone when it ends so quickly. Or if a song runs 2 minutes and 45 seconds, but the titles run a minute longer, you have to arrange tha...
When I was growing up, I despised Irishness. I felt our music, our television and our books were just poor imitations of what came out of Britain and America. I was all set to abandon it entirely.
If one wants to go on living, one must evolve. Before, when we composed, we would start by a series of music themes. Once created, we would hire writers and lyricists to make up the text and the story line. I was the first to do this backwards with '...
I flood the Internet with what I think is quality content. That's why I did things like giving out a song every 100,000 Twitter followers because I am just looking for ways to get my fans to hear all this music without over saturating things.
I'm gonna make music, and I'm gonna capture every aspect of being a human being. That's really all I'm trying to do. I think that artists and pop culture identities are used to simplify what it means to be a human and pigeon-hole people into looking ...
When I was first starting out in the music industry, I was always coupled in the same sentence with Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera - and I was probably the worst of them. I think a lot of people back then thought, 'Mandy Moore...
Yeah, you know, I performed occasionally. I was in such despair because I just - if I didn't have my music to connect with, I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing. There was never a 'B' plan here; it was just this. So it took me a long...
In the late '70s I was asked to sing for the first time in Germany. I'll never forget it. It was at a festival in Bremen. The German audience went berserk and the reviews were a phenomenon. For some reason the German audience understood how technical...
I rallied all the youth around me, all the people who liked Compa, but felt like it was dying, going away, being replaced with Zouk. So it became a movement. So, through the years, I've played my music with dedication, discipline and originality, and...
I find myself wanting to make music at the dining room table or in the bedroom - I'm kind of a mobile writer, so I sort of move around the house. But the attic is definitely where I can make the most noise. While everyone on the lower floors screams ...
Honestly, as hard a profession as acting is, I think music is even harder. Acting, you're like a leech, because someone else does the hard part for you. They write it for you, then the director tells you what to do. You really just need to know how t...
I remember being a little kid sitting in the living room with my brother and some friends from around the neighborhood, and I would sit at the piano and as they were running around the room doing different things and being silly, acting out, I would ...
For me, it's always this constant battle and search when I'm out on stage as to where and when do I really open myself up to the people that are there. How do I let myself feel present in the space, and how do I allow myself to get into the music and...
I will never sign to a major record label again. If, by some mega fluke, a record of mine looked like it might break big, I'd try and do it via an indie or somehow license it. I'm not having my music owned by those corporate bastards again.
There's a relationship between music and spirituality and inspiration and to a certain extent improvisation that draws me in, because I don't totally understand it. I know that those relationships have been telling me, since I started making records,...
A lot of people thought my career was over. If you're not releasing records, then something must be wrong. Either the record company doesn't like your music, or you've been dropped. It has to something negative. It's not like you wanted to take a bre...
I feel like I'm doing something in Atlanta that nobody ever did as far as rap. If it happens to end up on the top 40 or the pop charts, it doesn't mean I meant to go pop. It's just where the music took me. It started at the bottom, and it rises.
I realized that, all along, my theory was right: Make music that you want to hear, and instead of having fans that one day might criticize or abandon you, your fans aren't even fans. They're people with tastes similar to yours. They're friends you ha...
But I also enjoy music outside the band. I've been doing production for other people, including Robert Wyatt. Check him out. The album we did together, 'Rock Bottom,' I think it's really lasted well. It's a 35-year-old album, but it worked.
