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.
This is often the way we put together our lives, adding the striking qualities of others into our own character.
A great band name would be Tickling Whiskers. Especially if the lead singer is a cat. I’d love to audition for backup dancer.
I always thought I’d make a great backup singer. I don’t practice. It’s just pure talent.
It's been important to me to be a good activist, a good thinker, a good musician, a good singer, and a good entertainer. You can't do it all, but I have walked those delicate lines as best I know how.
Don't expect fame to come overnight. That filtered through to me in my own career. Look at Madonna: she's not the best singer in the world, but she's got where she has through hard work.
In Nigeria, if you say you're a singer, people say, 'So what? Everyone sings.' In Germany, my voice stood out more.
I was never much of a singer. I was terrible. It's embarrassing: I was trying to sound like everybody else. I went through a big Cure phase, so I was trying to do that kind of dramatic voice.
I was fanatically ambitious. All I ever wanted was to be a star. I didn't want to be a singer. I didn't want to be an actress. I wanted to be a star.
I'm about to start working with a singer I met on my last trip: she'll get international exposure, and I'll have a song out in that market sung in Cantonese.
Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I've talked to like the record.
When Bob came through Cincinnati, he wanted a girl singer to be on his show. There was a local contest, and my sister and I entered, but Bob said, Gee, I wouldn't break up the team.
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.
There's no leader of this band, and there never will be. That's the key. You can't control how the public perceives you-people see rock'n'roll bands as the guitar player and the singer.
So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.
My problem is: as a singer and a dancer, if I get it in my body one way, it is harder for me to be open to something new - to something else; to something that is really organically connected to the piece and not just to my perception of it.
