DARYL HALL

Any song I don't feel good about, I shelve. Anything you ever hear me sing, it's because I want to.

To me, there's two kinds of music these days. There's ephemeral music, and there's music that has lasting power and depth.

Traditionally, duos get accused of lots of things.

If you can sing, you never lose your voice. If you don't know how to sing, your voice goes away because you sing from your throat.

Having a solo career is a funny thing.

I'm in the trenches; I do the best work I can always do. Having said that, the way that what I do converges with the outside world is fascinating to me. Because it ebbs and flows. People's interest and understanding, it changes all the time.

In the early '70s, I started to feel like Philadelphia soul was the black-sheep brother of rock and roll. I decided to try to get away from it.

Yes, I travel in unusual circles. George Osborne and his wife Frances are my cousins.

The younger generation gives me more respect than I could ever hope for.

If you take a bunch of superstars and put them in a room where they don't have their assistants and entourage, it's funny to see what happens.

I hear a lot of people singing in funny voices and singing like they're stupid. Singing in a deliberately fey and dumb and childish way. And I find it to be a disturbing trend.

The Internet allows me to be more free.

I love antique architecture, so if I have any indulgences, I have owned and renovated and reconstructed a lot of old houses.

If you're African American, you are forced into making different choices, in a lot of cases, than you are as a white person.

You don't have to be a good musician if you've got certain computer skills.

I'd like to see more crossover between white and black music. That's something I've been advocating for years.

I specialize in early homes, and what I care about the most is renovating a home and taking it back to its original construction idea.

I had the idea of 'Live From Daryl's House' way before I contracted Lyme disease.

I think an artist's true worth comes through an inter-generational thing - when you go beyond your own time, and start influencing people in a greater way than just what surrounds you.

My house is actually two houses that were deconstructed. They were Connecticut Valley houses built in 1771 and 1781. I took them down piece by piece and reconstructed them about 50 miles to the west on the New York/Connecticut border.

Everybody who I ever cared about has told me that they like my music: Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Al Green, The Spinners, Smokey Robinson. Everybody that matters.

I think there are people who really always have and always will care about the quality of music in general, about the sound of the music, things like that.

I was a pioneer in MTV and I was there from the very beginning. So I saw how that developed and how loose it was and how much fun it was in its looseness. And I was influenced a lot by that.

The 'Daryl's House' thing has made me into a live musician even more than I ever was, and even in the way I record.

I was very inspired by my mother. She was a vocal teacher and sang in a band, and my first memories of her were going out with her on the local circuit.