Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the songwriting. Those lyrics take you in.
A protracted legislative fight will not move us closer to where the music industry wants to be - delivering music to fans through a variety of different, innovative Web sites.
Music has done a lot to enhance the emotions of sports. It's played in arenas. Whenever there is footage cut together they're always using music. And it goes together, you know.
We live with incessant music, all the time. It's like some weird musical purgatory, there is absolutely no rest for the ears, no space to absorb and reflect.
There's something missing in the music industry today... and it's music. Songs you hear don't last, it's just product fed to you by the industry.
When people say to me, 'What do you think of rap music?', my answer is, 'There's no such thing. There's rap, and there's music.'
Well, I'll tell you, I don't know how aware teenagers are of me. I think it really depends on the teenager and how well-versed in music they are and what kind of music they like.
I'm not suggesting our music is the only music, but I am suggesting that there are certain elements in America's culture that are so precious that it would be a shame for them to go down the drain.
I don't listen to music. I very rarely listen to music. I only listen for information. I listen when a friend sends me a song or a new record.
Amazingly, I've been sort of an anomaly in the music industry. I feel like I've been able to exist as kind of a throwback artist.
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
When I perform Strauss, it is as if the music fits me like a glove. My voice seems to lie in a happy area in this music, which is lyrical and passionate at the same time.
I'm treating country music like it's a sport. I'm looking at where my competition is and realized I needed to work on my songwriting.
I spent most of the year in the studio for electronic music at a radio station in Cologne or in other studios where I produced new works with all kinds of electronic apparatus.
I think people in electronic music are trying to get these big features: 'Oh my gosh, I'm gonna get the biggest pop star to feature on my track.'
I dropped the 'Bundy' with my country music because I wanted it to be two separate things: There's me as a songwriter and a country singer, and there's me as a Broadway performer.
I'm excited to be part of a movement that's progressing country music. There's always gonna be people saying, 'It ain't country anymore,' but I don't get into that whole deal.
And to me, I had come out of Texas, and during that time was when I realized that a lot of people in Nashville, their idea of what country music was was not the same as mine.
I believe that music is another form of news. Music is another form of journalism to me so I have to cover all the areas with my album.
I even have nephews who make music, my daughter makes music. I don't know what advice to give them these days. It's really a tough industry to break into.
I never feel like I have to hang on to the music. I don't expect that the music will go away. Ideas are the only thing I can point to that are permanent and fixed.
