In the big picture, it doesn’t really matter if we never made a record, or we never sang a song. That isn’t important.
I didn’t grow up listening to musicals. I sang coritos or Spanish spiritual songs and was raised on gospel singer Kirk Franklin.
None of the other guys in the band really sang, so that’s when I brought Roy Clark in.
I was once part of a Christmas cabaret. I sang ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.’ I tap-danced. I had a ten-gallon hat. It was quite absurd.
I sang in a rock band when I was training as a lawyer. You know, not professional, we just did it for fun. We just did gigs all over Edinburgh and some in Glasgow and some at festivals.
Michael Jackson was one of popular culture’s greatest artists. Nobody danced better. Few sang more compellingly. No one understood more about stage spectacles or music videos. He was an innovator. His reach was global.
My grandmother passed at 104. She sang and wrote songs until she passed.
I prepared five songs, I sang them, and he hired me. I started working about a month later at the piano bar.
My grandmother was a huge influence on me. She allowed me to be my flamboyant self as a kid. She babysat me; auditions came later – by later, I mean six years old. She sang and played piano, and I’d sit beside her. I don’t know how confident I am, but I think you need it to survive in this industry.
I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world.
After college, rather than pursue real work, I joined a folk group and sang in coffee houses and nightclubs, an occupation that does little for the intellect and even less for the complexion.
My mother wrote lyrics and sang but was overtaken by life with four children and worked.
Professionally, the first time I sang was on ‘Alice Upside Down.’ It was the first movie that I did, and I had this little mini singing part.
What’s interesting is a lot of the older music when we start performing it, it acts a lot like muscle memory. It’s kind of like riding a bike. For me as a singer, I just had to remember like what part of my face I sang that into.
People threw food at me and sang songs about how ugly I was.
I sang a lot as a little girl and entered competitions. I loved singing in choirs, but it was as I got older that I really found my voice.
When I sang in bars and weddings, where you have to fight to be heard, you gain incredible humility.
He learned through the way that my father and I felt about his songs, his country songs, that they were great songs. And then he went out and sang them for the audiences that we found, and he found a tremendous reaction to that.
I sang the songs in ‘The Doors’.
The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion.
Rihanna’s voice is just delicious for your ear. Sinatra had the same thing; anything he sang sounded pleasing to most people.
I pretty much came out of the womb singing. I think I sang all the time.
Maud Gonne was – excuse me, Maud Gonne was central to the Gaelic literature revival. She wrote plays, and she sang.
Some of my biggest commercial musical influences would be people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, of course, Johnny Cash. People that wrote and sang their own stuff, I really admired.
I had this thing about not giving too much of myself away, so I thought, if I sang lyrics, that’s giving too much away. You know, I really didn’t want to give myself away.
For me, the moment the mic is on and it’s rolling, it’s impossible to vocally relax for some reason. But one day, I’m going to be able to sing the way I sang when I was a little kid, completely open and free. That’s, I think, the one thing that’s changed: Growing older, I’m not ashamed to hear my voice.
I did a Christmas tour and I sang on that and the response I got was people want to hear more of Chi Chi’s voice.
I was surrounded by music in my family, surrounded by people who sang songs – every single person I knew as a child growing up had one, two, three songs they knew from start to finish.
When Guru Randhawa and I sang, people really liked our chemistry.
I sang the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium – at a baseball game – which was crazy; there was, like, 60,000 people there, which is a huge deal in America – singing the National Anthem.
Elvis’ early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.
I wasn’t one of those girls who sang at church.
I always sang around the house. My brother and I would sing songs like ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ and stuff like that.
I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles, and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience.
Well, yeah, I sang to some songs on the radio or in the shower.
I sang in the glee club and church choir, but I never sang a solo. I never thought of myself as a singer, and that might have crossed your mind, too.
So when I wrote ‘Down’ – when I sang the melody, I sung the word ‘Down’ for no reason. I don’t know why. That’s how I came up with the medley. I was like, ‘I don’t know why I said down, but we got to write a song around it.’
The only reason I became the singer in the band is because I sang the best. It wasn’t out of some desire to be a star or be a famous singer. It’s not like I love interviews.
I always sang when I was little and my father, who was a great influence on me, also had a wonderful voice. He and my mother really encouraged me to sing and play the piano. They were always very supportive.
I always knew that I would be some type of public figure, but I never knew that it would be rapping, ’cause my dad sang: I saw him deal with the ills of the music industry, just on the outside looking in.
When I sang my father’s songs in concert, that was all people wanted to hear. I was always asking myself, ‘Can I measure up?’
I first sang ‘Holding Back the Years’ in my earliest band, Frantic Elevators. When the Elevators split and I started Simply Red, I returned to the song and wrote the ‘I’ll keep holding on’ chorus.
The question for me was, could TV actually teach? I knew it could, because I knew 3-year-olds who sang beer commercials!
I went to Catholic grade school, so we sang a lot of religious songs: ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘Silent Night.’
Years and years ago, I sang at a blues bar with a band behind me. It was with my friend, my guitar teacher at the time. I took some sporadic lessons.
I was rejected for couple of adverts for sounding too sad. One was for Diet Coke, but it’s a good thing it didn’t happen because it probably would have been a big blight on my soul. It also happened with a fabric softener called Downy, and I guess the way I sang ‘Only Downy’ made people weep.
I just sang at first – I didn’t ever play guitar before The Kills.
I was more of a dancing kid than a singing kid. I mean, I sang in school choirs and I sang in school musicals, but I was much more interested in dancing than singing.
I believe in ‘Hard Livin’.’ The song has a lot of potential. I sang it on the road for about a year before I put it on an album. The crowds really seemed to like it.
I realised when I sang at family parties and Christmases I’d suddenly get everyone’s attention, and, being the youngest of three, I thought what a brilliant attention-seeking ploy it was.
My mom sang in high school choir and so did my father.
Man, we were so opposite. One guy sang high, the other low. One guy tall, one short. We were like a quartet without the two guys in the middle. If you were putting two guys together to make hit records, you wouldn’t have picked Bobby and me.
In the past, I’d sort of know before Ozzy sang something, what he was going to sing. I’d know what sort of way a melody was going to go ’cause of the way he’d approach it.
Poets have a sense of place. My place was London, and I sang about it.
I grew up in a haunting postindustrial landscape where prehistoric ferns grew among tens of railway tracks surmounted by brilliant arc lights where birds nested and sang in the dead of night, because for them, it was day.
I was singing doo-wop on the corner under the streetlight with four other guys when it wasn’t called doo-wop. We just got together and sang, so that music is inside of me. It’s a lot of stuff that has been rolling around in here and becoming this compost and has made me who I am as a singer.
I started posting initially because I just wanted to get my voice heard. I sang cover versions of show tunes and got such nice feedback that I began singing songs I had written.
My goal in life was to host the MTV Awards, because it’s the awards show that Prince sang on, and that was the awards show that Eddie Murphy hosted and Arsenio hosted.
Erykah Badu sang with me at a sold out show in San Francisco which was great.
What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? ‘Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.’ I think of that. No big deal. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I am content.
My grandmother sang, too, and she was really loud. It was this wild kind of singing. I count her among my influences.
I’ve had this song in a drawer for a long time, maybe seven or eight years. Every time I’d do an album, I’d take it out and listen to it, and always liked what it had to say. Plus when Garth came in and sang on it, that made it really special.
