'Passione' is a selection of the music moments that have accompanied my youth; a collection of cherished memories, of moments, of fleeting emotions, of sleepless nights.
If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.
I do believe that music has an intense power to connect us together, to inspire us to become ourselves.
Audiences respond in entirely different ways. One thing is unanimous - music binds us altogether.
What really swings is the music of the United States, Cuba, the Caribbean and vicinity, and, of course, Brazil. The rest is all waltzes.
I've always loved music and held it as a sacred thing that I can't touch, as I don't really want to deconstruct it or be a musician.
I think in the world of indie music there's this sort of false modesty.
Other than Green Day, we haven't had a lot of protest music over the past few decades.
There's a lot of music that sounds like it's literally computer-generated, totally divorced from a guy sitting down at an instrument.
When I decided to go to a country that subsidized music, I went to the Soviet Union for two years.
I'm very happy that I got introduced to music only as something you got pleasure from.
I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.
My parents played the radio, but music was never an obsession or something that I thought I could call a career.
I guess, like, the whole thing with music is - you're a little bit in control but not fully in control. Which is kind of the fun of it.
Whenever I do a parody it's not meant to make you hate anybody's music really.
I guess I would call my music 'blues punk.' There's a lot of influences.
And I like messing around in the engine room of music. Seeing what happens in the rhythm section area.
In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.
I think popular music in this country is one of the few things in the twentieth century that have made giant strides in reverse.
I don't like headphones very much, and I rarely listen to music on headphones.
I've got a feeling that music might not be the most interesting place to be in the world of things.
