I'm a 50-year-old guy making music for over 20 years. I've been writing songs since I was 20, so it's really been 30 years, and it's always been personal, but I've always told stories.
Film was something that I didn't see as a step up from music videos, though obviously, music videos, the fact that you work with a crew and a film camera, are the closest to film I've ever been. That is the only schooling I've ever had.
There's only one music video that had an emotional impact on me, and that's 'Hurt' by Johnny Cash. That's exceptional. There is no music video I can think of apart from that one that really reaches you inside.
I've never got on with the British press because they've always given me such a hard time. Once they build a band up they just want to do people down. They shouldn't concentrate on the colour of someone's shirt they should listen to the music.
I have no musical talent at all. I was banned from music classes and told I would never be able to understand anything. I still don't think I can sing, but somehow I get away with it.
I was clear that I wanted to do music and I wanted to write songs. But I wasn't clear about how I was going to make that happen. I wrote loads of songs but didn't want to show them to anyone.
How we absorb music is unique. I know what I do. When I'm listening to music, I tend to find myself in a song. That's what really makes you connect is if you feel what that song is saying.
Folk music is music that everyday people can play, and it inspired a lot of people to make their own music. That trailed into making your own pop music, and that's why garage bands started springing up everywhere.
I really want it to have an impact on the world. I want to be in a town on the other side of the world, and somebody walks up and says, 'That music you made in Glasgow, I listened to it every day, and it moved me.'
I find the songs I want to record by listening to as much music as I can. 'When I hear things I really like, I ask the writers to send me a tape of everything they've ever written.
I feel like everything I write about is a gift I need to share because there is somebody out there going through a similar thing that might need to hear it. I know music helped me a lot. And still does.
I do not have voice for Russian music; I cannot be cute little peasant like in operas of Glinka or Rimsky-Korsakov. I am now never in Russia; I am Austrian citizen. But definitely I am Latin!
I really believe it's not bad to look back within music. I don't mean retro, but using your own memories to make a song because our memories are what make us who we are.
Pop comes from the word 'popular,' which means that it could be anything that appeals to any group of people. When you talk about general masses, I think there's elements in every kind of music that can reach a broad audience.
When I was in school, I really thought about soul a lot. I was listening a lot to Bjork and to the Commodores. I really wanted to know how they felt. And especially with Bjork, the music there told me wow, that's really her soul there.
I probably won't be able to hear it until five years from now anyway. That's when I always hear my own music. It takes five years to sit down with it after not hearing it for a couple of years.
That's what so sad about a lot of modern music, in my opinion, so many young bands never stay around long enough to fulfill their ultimate promise. They only get halfway there or a quarter of the way there.
That's what my music... I'm working on a solo record right now, it's gonna be more hip-hop than anything, like electronic hip-hop, futuristic hip-hop. I'm probably gonna be rapping on it.
I had no intention of becoming a performer, and yet under miraculous circumstances I was brought into the music industry fold. If divine powers hadn't intervened, I'd still be living in China working in some area of Sino-American comparative law.
Telling people that I wanted to make dance music, or be on the radio, they looked at me like I was crazy because there was nothing like that in Lichtenstein when I was getting started. That's why I went to Germany, because there is industry there.
I'd like to teach kids how to write songs. This will be my first year so I'm just as green as some of the rest of the folks. It's like a music camp and I get to hang out with some of the past contestants.
