I often find myself listening to a record because a lot of people or magazines have told me it's good and I'm supposed to like it, and I try to stay in touch with what's happening and I'm also a fan of music. I find myself trying to like something th...
Dizzee's just my childhood hero. He's definitely the inspiration. He's got himself to a very good place. He's defied the expectations of what British black urban music was like. He was the first person who made the rest of Britain realise it wasn't j...
Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearnin...
When I first started, everything happened at once. I became religious, my musical career took off, I got married, I had kids, and all that happened within the course of a year. I had an excitement about this newly found faith, and so I was writing ab...
I'm confused that there is a lack of faith in listening to and deciding what is a great song and instead going for these formulaic, bad songs over and over again. But that's what happened when people from beverage companies bought record labels and r...
After my touring life, I'd love to be more involved with charity. It gives me a lot of fulfillment, you know? I would love to get people who are into my music more active in charity work. In the future, when I have more time, I'd love to do spend mor...
It's so funny because if you tweet your lyrics and then you hear it in a song next week, you're like, 'Hey I had that same idea.' I'm very secretive with my music. We have to send emails password protected. Because once that song gets out, you aren't...
I don't dismiss the music that I was involved with, I don't think it was a joke, I don't think it was funny or a phase, I don't think it was just something I was doing back then, to me it was who I am. It connects all the way through. I don't distanc...
I specifically remember doing the musical 'Sweet Charity' at Stagedoor. I was playing Vittorio Vidal, which is a very funny part, and some other small roles. I couldn't really sing that well, but there were so many fun bits, and I just remember the t...
I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways, not just sketch, not just standup, not just characters, all of t...
Oh God, it's such a big world right now for artists. There are as many possibilities as you can have time for, getting your music out there with the internet, and Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, and everything that you have, there is a way to spread the wo...
My goal was to play drums, but my father made me take piano lessons. He told me I needed to learn to read music first, so I took lessons for six years. I thank God that he made me take those lessons, because it taught me a tremendous amount.
One of my heroes is a composer named James Bernard, and oh my God... I can still listen to his music today and be stirred and moved by it. But I think that you fall in love with... Well, again, when you're young, it really is more powerful. Much more...
Cultures have long heard wisdom in non-human voices: Apollo, god of music, medicine and knowledge, came to Delphi in the form of a dolphin. But dolphins, which fill the oceans with blipping and chirping, and whales, which mew and caw in ultramarine j...
God has been my number one inspiration. I also look up to Will Smith and Jamie Fox who are also personal friends of mine. They give me great career advice. I would also include Chris Stokes, as a filmmaker and music producer. I've been working with h...
For the longest time I was brought up listening to only two genres of music, pop and rock. So in the past few years I've been trying to expand my interests because I think that you can only write to the extent of your knowledge, and if your knowledge...
When I was a teeny little girl, I was in dancing school, and I sang. We had to put a dance to a song, so I went to the 10-cent store one day and looked at all the sheet music. It was all laid out, and I picked 'Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.'
I maintain that when I finally retire from my career in music, I will go and live back in Wales - when I am an old person, if I live to be an old person. The water I miss, and the air, there's something different about it. And I miss the simple life.
Maybe I've got to admit that what I did here was enough. I can make some more films. Maybe I'll direct a film. Maybe I'll have my musical put on stage. But nothing, really, to be absolutely honest, competes with making a very successful pop band for ...
I think, people look at me, and they say, 'You were very aggressive,' I say, 'Yeah,' you know, and I've made a better life for myself, for my son, so I should reflect that with my music now. I shouldn't still be rhyming like that; that would be me ly...
I dabbled in things like Howlin' Wolf, Cream and Led Zeppelin, but when I heard Son House and Robert Johnson, it blew my mind. It was something I'd been missing my whole life. That music made me discard everything else and just get down to the soul a...
