My parents listened to music in our house all the time when we were growing up. It was everything from Dolly Parton to Paul Simon... We packed in everything.
My parents were just really weird and protective about the music I listened to. Whenever I wanted to buy an album, they would have to buy it first and listen to it and let me know if I could have it.
I used to play the piano by listening to it - like Chopin pieces, when I was, like, a little kid - and then the minute my parents got me lessons to read music, I couldn't do it anymore.
You can rebel against everything adults say. When I want to find out what the new music is, I find out what parents hate.
It's interesting, as I said on the last tour in America, the audience actually came out, they had to have been the kind of fans who listened to my music via their parents, you know what I mean?
My parents were both very musically inclined, they were both songwriters and musicians, so we grew up in the house singing music together, and R&B had a huge strong arm in the foundation of my career.
Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math.
I dropped out of NYU, moved out of my parent's house, got my own place, and survived on my own. I made music and worked my way from the bottom up.
I would say I grew up listening a lot to Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland and Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell. I grew up listening to those because my parents were kind of into folk music.
My mother always took my brothers and me to music lessons. There were six children. Our parents attended our concerts and encouraged us to study and enjoy many different types of music.
My parents had chosen the medical profession for me. I even studied a few semesters at St Xavier's College, but at the back of my mind, I always wanted to be a musician like my father.
You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.
When my parents were paying for my sport, it wasn't just me out on the ice. Pretty much every dollar my mom made teaching went into my skating.
There is nothing worse that a thirteen-year-old boy. You're embarrassed by your parents, and you're trying to find your independance because, deep inside, you are so dependent on your mom.
Before I was a mom I used to think that parents who worried about their kids watching MTV were just clueless. Now that I'm a mom, I see what the fuss was all about!
That's actually how my parents met. They were pen pals. My mom was in the Philippines and my father was in the States, and they wrote to each other. He went out to meet her, and they wed not too long after.
I wanted to be a child actor so bad that every day I'd beg my parents if I could audition, but my mom said, 'Not until you can drive yourself to auditions.'
Our parents are obviously proud, but they're still trying to get used to the fact that we're in a band. I have a feeling my mom would actually like One Direction if I wasn't in it!
I don't know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents' marriage. And it's interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison.
My parents separated when I was four. It wasn't the smoothest of divorces, but then as my mother always says, you can't have a passionate marriage without a passionate divorce.
I think the '70s are always inspiring to me. I was born then, so I have a lot of memories about how my parents were and what kinds of movies I was watching.
