In '77 there was no Internet, there was no Twitter or Facebook, and I think that, without being some old git who hates anything new, people's attention spans are too short. Back then you had 'Top Of The Pops' and 'Melody Maker,' and you had to make t...
I was going to go to college and graduate and move to New York and do the Broadway thing. That's where a lot of my influences vocally and writing come from. Then I did some covers, and towards the end of college, I saw it was a path I could take. I w...
People have always said that I could have been a highly successful pop artist, if only that were my intention. It never was. My original intention was to be a kind of behind-the-scenes participant in music, to just be a record producer and engineer. ...
Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, ...
While I'm interested in philosophy, I find all the different theories out there somewhat difficult to get a firm grip on. Movies and novels, on the other hand, are easy to understand. So what I like to do is use pop cultural ephemera of all kinds as ...
Arthur: [talking to August] Naw, I ain't got no family. My pops was a drunk. My mom, she ran off with this crackhead named Lil' Jesus. But he wasn't no Lil' Jesus, you know what I'm saying?
Because I didn't have any queer, lesbian, female role models I hated my own femininity and had to look deep within myself to create an identity that worked for me. Pop culture just doesn't hand us enough variety to choose from.
In their heyday, the Pet Shop Boys were the Interpol of the Eighties, dressing up to sing really weird pop songs about lust and loneliness in the big city. They're low-pro now, not retro-worshipped in the manner of Depeche Mode, New Order, or The Cur...
There's this bubblegum pop thing which is prevalent now that we haven't had before. People's ears are slightly de-tuned; they've been exposed to this weird synthetic, implausibly upbeat, Mickey Mouse stuff which I think is just weird; it's not really...
I believe that pop culture is just, like, so ready for 'Watchmen.' We tried so hard to ride that wave between satire and reality, and all the things that make you still care about the character, but you don't miss the commentary about them.
Listen," Francois said. "Yonder is Paris --laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To king's courts s...
We’re all geniuses. Life is merely overpopulated with singers who play drums, and, drummers who sing, to pay rent.
Poverty without a people's government looks like hopelessness, but to see poverty in organized communities is to see relief-in-progress.
Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's.
I'm quite a particular singer, and I need to feel like I can bite into the song, in a way, to make it my own. You want the challenge of the songs having some attitude.
Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.
Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.
Although becoming a singer was my plan A after first hearing Whitney Houston when I was 17, I started off with plan B by going to the teacher-training college that my dad went to. It was a slow coming of age.
A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker, rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.
I am not a natural singer, but I can sing, and probably the way I sing is more imitative than from myself, which is why I am never going to be an amazing recording artist.
I used to date the lead singer of The Cranberries, but she cheated on me. Turns out she had some turkey on the side.
