Janis Joplin is definitely one of my biggest influences. She taught me how to feel music, and I don't think there's anyone like her that could bring such pain and emotion to a song.
I thought the '60s was the most exciting time and the most vital music, and we were really together as one mind then. Then afterwards, the songs and the bad drugs, that took its toll.
I make the music my ears want to hear, I wear the clothes my body wants to wear and the ones boys call me back for, and I generally make the songs that my feet dance to.
The Zombies were really unique - they had elements of jazz and classical music in their songs and songwriting. They had a very, very different sound compared to a lot of their contemporaries at the time.
You've got to go down the road you naturally go down, and for me it was pop, folk country, just feel-good music. I suppose most of my songs are very up-tempo.
I run with music all the time. I cannot run without my iPod. I have everything. Teddy Pendergrass. Luther Van Dross. Michael Jackson. Outkast. If an Usher song comes on and it's fast, I go fast.
After 'Return Of The Bumpasaurus' in '96, I just got away from music for, like, a year. Literally, I think I produced two songs in a year. I was totally kicking it, running around.
After that I didn't listen to music as much because '70s music just wasn't... I remember all the songs, but it wasn't because I was into them, you know what I mean?
I usually write my music on a piano, and I really enjoy performing that way, because that actually shows how the music was in my mind before it actually became an electronic song.
'Watchmen' is like the music you feel is written just for you. 'That's my song, no one else gets that but me.' That's why the fan base is so rabid, because they feel personal about it.
Thanks to the greatest invention of recent years, the MP3-playing alarm clock, I can now choose the song that wakes me up in the morning.
I only do private room karaoke where it's just me and one of my closest girlfriends. My mom always said I could really belt songs out, and the Dixie Chicks feed that encouragement.
I like songs in all different genres and types. My production and songwriting is everything from pop rock to hip-hop and everything in between.
We are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he finds one that really says something.
The buzz you get when you're playing a song and everyone is screaming and dancing and what have you and singing along is incredible.
I mean, Tool has a style, but we try to make all our songs sound different from each other.
A lot of times when songwriters get together and write a song... somebody will come in with a hook and a lot of times they come out with something that sounds a little crafty.
Probably some of the songs I never even really listened to the lyrics. Half of them I'd hear off the radio and was probably singing the wrong words and didn't even know it.
So pretty much, to sum it up, if you can freak someone out and bring that kind of emotion out of somebody with a song, you're doing something right.
When something seems unbalanced and out of rhythm, just a song can tune things up in a moment. The power of music is therapy.
The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears.
