The idea is, we're still a society where we recognize and see and even sometimes seek members of our own tribe, whatever that tribe is. It could be ethnic, religious, geographic, political.
I like playing around with the words; I love it when I feel like I've picked the exact right word to describe whatever it is I'm trying to describe.
I think my love is storytelling. No matter what it is, it's storytelling. And so whatever the medium is, what's right for the story, I enjoy doing it.
Love yourself, whatever makes you different, and use it to make you stand out. Mine is my voice and the fact that I'm gay: well, the fact that I'm flamboyantly gay.
The haters and the trolls have always used me as an excuse to make fun of something that is out of the ordinary, something that doesn't necessarily make sense to them. For whatever reason, I have always been a target that people love to attack.
I love wearing whatever is comfortable, and that could be something which was in trend years ago. So, I don't follow fashion.
I love speculating about solutions to problems in mathematics. I have no interest whatever in sudoku. But I do look at chess and bridge problems in newspapers. I find that relaxing.
I love to be in the position of not knowing what I'm gonna do, but having rehearsed all of those so when something happens with the others actors I go with whatever that is I'm getting.
You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio.
Whatever I do, I do for the universal. It's not like an individual thing; it's not like something from me. What I present to the people is for all of us, you know. I present music for the people.
'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minim...
I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene, to cry or whatever, I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me.
When Merle and I started out we called our music 'traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.
You can say battle or war or whatever, but in the end, it's music. It's not really violent in intent at all, it's really just about expression and celebrating that in itself.
I'm just going to go out there, and if people want to put me on the front of their magazine or whatever, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine as well. I'm just going to go out there and make my music.
I think people need to have fun with whatever they're doing - makeup, their clothes, music, live shows - anything you don't need to take too seriously, don't take too seriously.
I think I'm sort of blind to genre. As long as it has a sort of honesty about it, which I think you'll hear in whatever music you respond to, then I think it doesn't need to be called anything particularly.
Because the casual music listeners are the ones who turn on the radio and they don't really care what's playing, they just know that they kinda like it or it's easy to drive to or it's easy to sing along to or whatever.
I do like to be creative and I'm very lucky that I've been given different areas in which I'm able to do that - whether it be film or television or theatre or whatever. I'm also still into music and recording.
People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.
To break R&B into subcategories does a disservice to the music. I like to live in a zone where I can do whatever I want, where I don't have to worry about genre.
