When I first came to Nashville, people hardly gave country music any respect. We lived in old cars and dirty hotels, and we ate when we could.
I don't sing country music because I'm not capable of singing other kinds of music; I sing it because I think it's the most beautiful kind of music there is.
I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.
I don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock.
I really like Alan Jackson, in Country Music. I think he's really very, very talented along with George Jones, and Merle Haggard, the same old favorites.
Country music was the music I was brought up on. It's the music that's closest to my heart and the music that speaks to me the most, and it's always been a big influence on my own songwriting.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
Country was about character. Country's changed because of monsters like Clear Channel who bought up all the stations and sliced them up into formats. Our demographic is now the soccer mom.
My mom wanted to be a country singer, too, so country was always being played. And my girlfriends and I used to go to concerts, like Brad Paisley, in middle school and high school.
Developed countries and advanced developing countries must open their markets for products from the developing world, and support in developing their export and import capacity.
The developing countries must be able to take a more active part in trade negotiations, through technical assistance and support from the developed countries.
I once dealt with a prima donna on a movie set. I won't say who, but his first name is a country. A communist country. Run by Fidel Castro.
The UN's unique legitimacy flows from a universal perception that it pursues a larger purpose than the interests of one country or a small group of countries.
I was lucky enough to have parents that took me out from country to country and go to school and learn how to be a better person.
While Argentina, Brazil, and Chile - what in textbooks used to be called the ABC countries - seem settled into democratic politics and free market economics, the Andean countries are in disarray.
I do think the patriotic thing to do is to critique my country. How else do you make a country better but by pointing out its flaws?
Putin needs strong moves to keep the country as one. There is some criticism that he is centralizing power, but in Russia, if you don't centralize power, you have the risk of losing the country.
Only two countries in this hemisphere are not democratic, but many countries in both Central and South America, and in the Caribbean, are really fragile democracies.
Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secre...
I saw what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight.
I always felt that if countries knew each other better, there would be less war. Often, conflict goes with demonizing other countries and cultures.
