Studios are designed to pull out all of that beautiful ambience you get from singing in a room, and then the engineer puts it back in digitally or through whatever machinery you've got.
Enjoy the music in your earbuds in your own head. Dancing and singing because you enjoy the tune so much you can't contain yourself doesn't amuse others in Starbucks.
Jewelry should not upstage you. I pick one hot point on my body that I'm going to highlight. Let one area do the singing - you don't want to hear three songs at once.
I didn't have bands that I was playing with growing up, so I learned to try to adapt and play these songs that were guitar songs on the piano, and sing them.
Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.
I don't want to be somebody who stands still and sings pretty. Each song is a world. Each song is a story. I don't achieve nearly what I want.
A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.
In order to get a note out, I have to dig deep, and I mean that on an emotional level. To physically sing, I have to get somewhere deep before I can do it.
We went on stage with the Jefferson Airplane, Jim started singing with Grace Slick and hugging her. Then he danced off the stage, went back into the dressing room and passed out cold.
I had lots of breaks. I guess the one that got my foot in the door was singing the National Anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City in '74.
Like most kids, I grew up singing 'This Land Is Your Land' in grammar school, but with the most radical verses neatly removed. This was before I knew it was a Woody Guthrie song.
I was not naturally talented. I didn't sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.
When I sing, it's the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. It's not about notes or scales, it's all about emotion.
I was constantly, always and forever, trying to perform the musical 'Annie' for anyone who would listen, and I have a terrible singing voice. It was the first thing that made me think I wanted to be an actress.
I have simply said that there's just a side of me that could not judge anybody singing. It's not who I am. I don't want to be that person.
It's so crazy to see people singing along to songs that aren't even released yet. I'm like, 'How do you even know the lyrics? Have you been watching YouTube?'
Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
Singing and being truthful to a song... I've developed that skill, and I know how to do that real instinctively, that's all I've been doing for the last 25 years.
So when I realised I could sing for a living - do what I loved and be paid for it - I thought, 'This is unbelievable. Unbelievable!' And that feeling has never left me.
Overall my race hasn't been a problem. I'm a Black artist with White skin. At the end of the day you have to sing what's in your own soul.
I want people to hear the honesty in my singing, and that I'm not hiding behind anything. It's raw. It's not for any arrogance or ego. It's just pure feelings.
