When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I ...
I'm an American songbook guy, though I've got eclectic tastes. I really love the American songbook. I've taken up the ukulele, and so you can play 'Five Foot Two' and Hawaiian music, but you can also do some of the great tunes, like 'You Go to My Hea...
No one dislikes LL Cool J. If you meet LL Cool J, you fall in love with LL Cool J. LL and I had mutual friends, and he and I had always talked about doing something. My fans know LL's music. And I love him - we're blood brothers at this point. We've ...
I have visualizations where I'm living in a really cool place - probably outside of town - with a really dope studio where I can record music or film things. Just have my own mini production house. That's really the thing I'd love to end up with the ...
I went to my dad when I was 17 and said, 'I want to be a country music star.' Which every dad loves to hear. And he said, 'I want you to go to college.' So we had a discussion. And I'm pretty stubborn. I'm a lot like him. And he said, 'If you go to c...
I can't say that I'm always writing in my head but I do spend a lot of time in my head writing or coming up with ideas. And what I do usually is write the music and melody and then, you know, maybe the basic idea. But when I feel that I don't have a ...
We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like th...
I went from a playing in a bar on a bar stool for free beer and tip money, where people weren't paying attention to me, to now I've got their attention. It's up to me to what I feed them with my music. It's up to me how I do that. I've put a lot of t...
I grew up listening to Switchfoot. I love Switchfoot; they're a great band. John Foreman is awesome. I really dig mainstream pop music, but I also have a heart for jazz and rock. Oh! Coldplay! I cannot miss Coldplay! I think 'Fix You' is one of the m...
I DJ'd for years. I DJ'd in high school, and I think my parents thought it was a passing thing. And then when I was in my second year of college, I was like, 'Yeah, you guys don't need to send me money anymore. My DJ gigs are good enough. I'm selling...
I just turned 40, and I look at so many performers and so many people who are actually always on time and always have an album out. They don't have actual lives, in my opinion. I feel like I'm so much more than being famous and meeting a musical quot...
My son's always saying, 'Pop, I ain't being egotistical, but nobody else can do it like you.' And I say it's not that I don't believe that they do it, I'm just caught up in my own little world. Not just the music, my own world of life. I say you can'...
If life is music, I sometimes feel as though I was born on the off-beat of the song, and I love it. As Christian numbers reportedly decrease in America, my love for Christ feels as though it increases. I must be honest about such strange feelings: I ...
The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration. Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness a...
When people would ask me what I’m addicted to, I always said ‘music.’ And while they’d laugh it off like it’s a cliché, I’m actually a complete shopaholic when it comes to records. I’d literally buy 10 albums a week for years, so when ...
I'm just glad that I'm the musical equivalent of a character actress, because blues singers can keep singing and having an audience at 35, and someone like Madonna's gonna have to find something else to do, 'cos I don't care how pointy those bras are...
Got to go sing in a few minutes... no, that's GOT to go sing in a few minutes, as in... GOT TO GO SING in a few minutes... hahaha It's an all consuming compassion/obsession... a drawing... a wonderful bliss... a union of soul and spirit, of notes and...
The “music of decline” had sounded, as in that wonderful Chinese fable; like a thrumming bass on the organ its reverberations faded slowly out over decades; its throbbing could be heard in the corruption of the schools, periodicals, and universit...
By music I mean the ‘spirit of the game,’ which is what all spirituality ultimately points to — ‘I hear the voice’ (of Nature, God, beauty, truth, love…). Hear it and move onto or into. The easiest way to do that is to notice and invest i...
Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water,...
[last lines] Benjamin Button: Some people, were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers. And some people, dance.
