I went to art school, and I wanted to be an artist since I was 5. I basically moved to New York to do art, and I just sort of fell into doing music at an early age.
Radio is aimed at the 30-year-old market, so you have to have great music and appeal to get that age group. And you need a record company to believe in you. It's like a bit of the perfect storm.
Dancing has been in us, in people, since the Neanderthal age. There's something about moving, something about interpreting yourself to the music, that's attractive, that's interesting, that's intriguing, and everyone wishes they could do that.
When I was very young, there was a lot of music at home, mostly jazz. I was walking around singing and pretending I was in bands from a very young age. But the first song that was really personal to me was 'Blue Suede Shoes'.
I'm realistic about my age and realistic about the fact that there's an awful lot less in front of me than there is behind me. I've always felt that music is an art form that deserves to live the life of the artist.
Music has always been a huge part of my life from a very young age, and today it remains a very powerful and natural way for me to connect with people, as well as my children.
I think every age has a medium that talks to it more eloquently than the others. In the 19th century it was symphonic music and the novel. For various technical and artistic reasons, film became that eloquent medium for the 20th century.
Sound as medium has an incredible elasticity. So, of course, it is tempting for artists of other fields to try something with sounds. Why not? We are living in the age when there is no limit in gathering all forms of art and music to mix it together ...
I like to be alone and listen to music. Every match I play, I have a tune in my head over and over. It might only be a few words or a small piece of the tune, but it can drive you mad.
You'd think I'd have been happiest in my life playing music in front of 50,000 people at Gillette Stadium. But let me tell you, it's an odd feeling to feel alone in the spotlight.
Music should probably provide answers in terms of lyrical content, and giving people a sense of togetherness and oneness, as opposed to being alone in their thoughts and dilemmas or regrets or happiness or whatever.
The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.
It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by t...
I knew I'd just done one of the most amazing things that I will ever get a chance to do. Just to be part of a musical that's not your background and to pull it off and to think that we've done something that's really special.
In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We've been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.
Since I was a kid, music has been a huge part of my life. My parents had a pretty solid vinyl collection and exposed me to some amazing artists.
I think the amazing thing about gospel music is that not only does it lift up the death and resurrection of our Lord, which is consistent with the Gospel, but it is uniquely communicated depending upon the generation.
DJ Sliink is amazing, and his production is on the next level. There are a lot of EDM producers that I'd like to work with, not for the sake of having an engineered record, but for the fact that I love their production and music.
I thoroughly enjoyed working on Enemy of the State. Tony Scott is an important director, and has an amazing ability to express himself, and he doesn't do it in musical terms , he does it in emotional terms. I got along really well with him.
What influenced me was Tori Amos, who was unapologetic about expressing anger through music, and Sinead O'Connor. Those two in particular were really moving for me, and very inspiring, before I wrote 'Jagged Little Pill.'
I use the music to vent, and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety, stress and depression, so that's how the album came out so dark.
