When I started, I faced a lot of hardships. People used to call me a Rafi clone because I used to sing my favourite singer's songs. Then 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa' happened. It gave me a good break.
I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.
It's so funny because I listen to songs that I recorded that I didn't really know anything about at the time. Later on I'm starting to feel the songs. Sing them first, feel them later.
Oftentimes, you read these pilot scripts that come through for American work, and they don't sing to you. I've got to be honest, not many of them ignite the flame or give you that burning feeling of, 'Oh, God, I really want to be a part of this.'
In almost everything that touches our everyday life on earth, God is pleased when we're pleased. He wills that we be as free as birds to soar and sing our maker's praise without anxiety.
I'm not really religious but very spiritual. I give money to this company that manufactures hearing aids on a regular basis. More people should really hear me sing. I have a gift from God.
I feel so very grateful to have the voice God gave me. It takes a lot of rest and training to sing, and I was lucky that I found a great teacher when I first moved to New York.
I'm a singer and as long as I can sing - which, thank God, is something that I still seem to be able to do - I'd like to carry on making records.
I had throat cancer, and I had to have radiation treatments, and I couldn't sing for a long time; and this was in '97. I had 28 radiation treatments. I didn't die, thank God.
I would never dispute that I've been given a gift by God. That's something I've been raised to believe. I'm not an idiot: I know that I can sing, and I know that I can act.
The fact that I am blind is not what defines my life. It should be of no more interest than my blood type. People wonder if there is a relationship between my lack of sight and the way I sing. But there's no connection.
How could 30 years be the blink-of-the-eye it felt? It was the difference between black-and-white footage of the Second World War and David Bowie on 'Top of the Pops' singing 'Life on Mars.'
I was in a show choir. I can't sing or dance to save my life, but I was very passionate. People said my parents paid the choir director to let me in. It was actually the parents who started that one!
I see my life flashing before me when I see people in the audience singing along to something I wrote in the '80s, and they're maybe standing next to someone who knows the more recent stuff.
When I went to college at the University of Nevada back in Las Vegas, I got tricked into singing in choir. The first thing we did was the Mozart 'Requiem.' That was the piece that changed my life overnight.
To me, obstacles in life build character. You have to be able to overcome adversity in order to succeed and appreciate the simple things life has to offer... that's where most of my inspiration for writing and singing comes from.
I learned by listening to other people sing and doing impressions of them. And there are things no one can ever teach you, like phrasing. By listening to Sinatra, for instance - you felt that everything he sang had happened in his life.
With 'Sherry,' we were looking for a sound. We wanted to make the kind of mark that, if the radio was playing one of our songs, you knew who it was immediately. But I didn't want to sing like that my whole life.
Acting and singing on 'One Tree Hill' was definitely one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I didn't even know I could act until I auditioned at the casting call for the part of Mia.
It took me so long to get to the music, where that was what I wanted to do all my life. It took me so long to realise that it wasn't really movies that I wanted to do, but to be on stage singing.
In my early life, I was a professional folk singer. I used to sing on the national television and radio in Canada. Nobody knows that - but now I've said it, haven't I? I'm strictly a shower singer at the minute.
