Top 22 Sharon Jones Quotes

I’m telling the story, and if I can’t tell the story, I’m not going to sing it. And if I don’t agree with the story, and if I got to sing something that portrays me as something I’m not, then I’m not going to sing it either. I didn’t even want to sing Aretha Franklin’s ‘Chain of Fools.’

I love the smaller clubs. I love the theaters. I love the festivals. There are things I don’t like. At certain theaters, people can’t get up and dance.

I knew I was going to be famous later in life.

For me, music is my joy. It’s my happiness. As long as this medicine, this chemo is in my body, I didn’t have my love, my joy.

Everything on my body turned real dark. My toes, under my feet, inside my mouth, under my tongue – I just turned really dark. I’m still here, but it’s gonna take a while to get back to normal. Chemo kills all the good cells along with the bad.

A lot of people call me gay because they don’t see me with anyone.

I was onstage one night and was singing. I hit one note, and I just doubled over. It was like being punched hard in the back. I couldn’t put my back up on the plane seat because of the pain. I got massages, thinking it was muscle spasms. The doctor told me at the time that it was my pancreas. I didn’t even know.

I don’t know why I keep saying this, and I don’t know why I keep using their names… And I’m not dogging them. I’m not slandering them. I’m not saying they are bad musicians. But how can Taylor Swift or Justin Timberlake win for R&B and funk? They are pop singers.

The only thing I wanted to accomplish was to finally get recognized by the music industry. If you know the awards, answer me this question: Do you see an award for soul music? No. They have R&B, funk, hip-hop and all sorts of contemporary things.

People buy my albums, and I love my albums when I do them because we try to record live with that same energy, but I can never get the energy that I have when I’m live.

Every time I do a gig, my goal is getting new fans.

At first, they told me it was just bile-duct cancer, but once they went in, they removed the gallbladder, the head of my pancreas, and a foot-and-a-half of my small intestine, and built me another bile duct and connected it to my stomach. It turned out to be pancreatic cancer, stage two, so, very aggressive.

When I first played at the Apollo, the owner didn’t even know who Sharon Jones was. The Apollo had never seen so many white people coming uptown.

I sing this song in church – ‘I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me.’ I got a feeling that all these shows, all this everything, is part of my blessing. And in my heart, I know I’m going to do every show, and everything is going to be OK.

I chose not to put a wig on. The reason why I chose to come out with the cancer thing is because there’s somebody out there who can see that all sickness isn’t unto death. That it’s something you can’t change at that point in time, so you just got to go with it. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t be ashamed of looking at yourself.

I’d love to get into one of Tyler Perry’s movies – play a little role, have a little character. I don’t care. But more than two lines! More than two words!

I miss my hair, but I feel like going out there with some fake braids wouldn’t be right. I want to be the most genuine performer I can be.

Phish is such a good band; they just make stuff up as a jam band.

If I can’t pronounce it, I don’t want to put it in my body. Everything to me now is organic, natural, right from the farm.

Until the ’90s, major labels were looking for a certain look. This Sony guy told me I was ‘too black, too fat, too short, and too old.’ Told me to go and bleach my skin. Told me to step in the background and just stay back. I had the voice, but I didn’t have the looks.

I feel like this: When you call me in to do something with you, you must want me to do soul-singing. Because you know I’m a soul singer. Don’t ask me to come in and rap. And don’t ask me to come in and sing pop.

I’m not trying to be a pop singer.