I was born into a family of gospel singers. My early ambitions were many. I was going to be a ballerina. I almost had that one come true until I tore a tendon, so I transferred from my toes to my throat and that’s where the talent settled.
It’s not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they’re not connecting with the characters they are portraying.
A lot of backup singers are really shy and don’t want their life documented. They’re not pining to be celebrity. They’ve had a front-row look at celebrity for a long time, and most people find out it’s not for them.
Young singers are much better educated musically, much better informed, through discs and videos, than I was.
As it turns out, three of my four kids are professional singers. And they’re really interesting, good singers.
There are bathroom singers, but I am a bathroom painter. In other words, my art will stay inside the four walls of my house.
There are hundreds of people running around with great voices. If they would study and develop them they could become great singers.
It’s a misconception that singers in Punjab use music as a backup in case their acting fails. For me, singing is the front, it’s not the backup, it was acting that happened by chance.
In high school, we had a really great jazz program that I finally was able to be a part of. They only wanted instrumentalists; they didn’t want any singers. But I made my way in, and I remember the conductor of the band wrote a lot of arrangements and asked me what I wanted to sing.
I think there’s always been singers like that and i’ve done my fair share of cheese as well.
Tom Jones told me only a few singers have got the pipes, and he’s right. He has. Sinatra did. I have.
You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you.
Biggie was a lyrical genius: he was a musical painter with words. As he rapped, you would see the picture come to life as you heard his story. You hear a lot of rappers rap; you hear a lot of singers sing, but you don’t see the movie in your head the way you do when you hear Biggie rap.
Country singers put a lot of soul into their songs, and I enjoy that.
I think the kind of togetherness and understanding between music directors and singers, and between producers and directors, is not the same anymore. Now, it’s all too professional.
I had four or five years in school training as a soprano. I fell into pop singing because of economics. I got out of high school and had to go work, and they weren’t hiring opera singers.
There are a lot of talented Punjabi singers in Bollywood and we are also using a lot of Punjabi songs and reprise versions of these songs in our films and I have also sung quite a few of them.
I grew up with singers. My father’s mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can’t remember a time there wasn’t music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters – George Gershwin, Cole Porter – and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.
The blues singers were talking about everyday life, and they pushed a button.
My parents were opera singers. I didn’t want to play opera because I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I’m so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don’t like every song I write.
To produce a proper album, you have to be in the studio and collaborate with all your singers. It takes a lot of time.
Sleep is the apple a day, really, for singers.
I am one of the few composers who has been lucky enough to manage to do songs with female singers, despite the labels and producers wanting otherwise. They don’t believe that songs with female voices can work and often push us to work with male singers.
I grew up listening to Beethoven and old jazz singers like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Anita O’Day. But those were, like, the only women I listened to – I hated women pop singers.
It’s hard to get a start as an instrumental guitar player. It’s a much quicker route to be in a band, so I was always in a band and writing songs with singers, but I always had the dream in the back of my mind to make an instrumental record.
It took me a while to really believe in myself or feel determined about it, but then once I realized that it’s possible for anyone, and these people who are singers started off very normal… I realized that it was not that hard to do.
A lot of singers entered the industry with me. A lot of them struggled. Many have not been able to make it but some have sustained.
Latino patriots have served and fought in every war. They are artists, dancers, singers, poets and journalists, teachers and scientists. More and more Latinos are becoming entrepreneurs and businesspeople, contributing to the wealth and economic well-being of the nation.
Lots of celebrities have had some sort of dance training, especially actors or singers – they have to have some movement skill and be trained physically.
One of my all-time favorite country singers is a guy named Conway Twitty.
You have singers that are trained, and then you have natural singers: people that, in my opinion, were just born to sing. And hopefully, I am one of them.
To me, that’s when music was music. Every studio had a full symphonic orchestra and a whole bunch of singers they used on every picture. Every radio show had singers on it, and NBC and CBS had their own staff orchestras. Music was everything. And it was good music; it wasn’t based on three chords.
I’ve been lucky in my life to work with people who I consider master singers.
In country music the lyric is important and the melodies get a little more complex all the time, and you hear marvelous new singers who are interested in writing and interpreting a lyric and in all form of popular music.
The fate of the singers who, like my songs, went up in flame was also the fate of the books which I later wrote. All of them went up in flame to Heaven in a fire which broke out one night at my home in Bad Homburg as I lay ill in a hospital.
Singers who are dependent on digital audio pitch correction software cannot last more than two-three songs.
My aspirations were never anything other than I really, really admired certain singers over the years, and I just wanted to do the best I could. And that has been kind of like the way I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to have a career, have some success, and yet continue to learn my craft.
The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.
I wasn’t just known as one of the singers in Little Mix, I was known as ‘the fat, ugly one’.
We’ve never been, really, singers or performers. We are a little bit but we are not like Mick Jagger or Keith Richards or anyone like that.
Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the ’70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.
Guitar players never listen to lead singers.
There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate.
Just look at the messages today’s media are sending everybody, from TV and commercials to actors and singers. Kids are just drowning in that 24-7 and it’s getting really bad.
Jazz radio is not very friendly to pop singers who decide to make a jazz record. But a lot of people have been. A lot of the people I’ve talked to like the record.
My mentor was Clara Ward of the famous Ward gospel singers of Philadelphia. And my dad was my coach. He coached me. And just my natural love for music is what drove me.
Broadcast radio was entering its own golden age during the Depression, with live programming on stations all through the day. Local stations needed singers, musicians, announcers, and whipcord personalities, along with Christian clergy to give prayers and pundits to speak on world affairs.
Donna Summer was one of the strongest female singers in pop music. She was very underrated as a vocalist and a writer, and her songbook is just outrageous.
Background singers who are any good have to be great imitators.
I’m like two different people. The way I sing comes from the music I listened to when I was younger, from black American R&B singers. My speaking voice is something else. It’s what my mum and dad taught me.
I’m a big fan of Lou Reed, and I do a lot of talking through songs. It’s more effective with my vocal limitations and also more powerful to slightly sing sometimes. It depends on the emotion, but I’m never going to try to compete with great singers.
We singers have a different level of responsibility from other musicians. We have words that we must convey; we have meanings that we must convey through these lyrics.
All you need in a successful boyband is two great singers and three okay singers and you get can away with it.
You always want to make sure that you’re not the weak link. You’re surrounded by really talented, great actors and singers, so just staying on your game is the main thing.
I’ve been through a lot of beef with other singers, but it’s all verbal.
