Janis Joplin Quotes

I have the ability to sing with emotion and feeling, but if you say I sound like Billie Holiday, that's cool. Let's look at who Billie was: she was this person, this singer, this beautiful diva who could move the audience with the slightest gesture of her hand.

Feeling emotionally connected to a song, and accumulating every bit of the moment's energy to sing out to the audience is what I believe makes a great performer.

I'd love to do a Broadway show, but I can't because of the style I sing.

I grew up listening to Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, and Angela Lansbury, so I grew up wanting to sound like Patti and Bernadette. What I realized, though, is that I can't sound like that, and what makes their performances magical is their uniqueness.

A singer for me is more like someone who is standing alone with a microphone like Scott Walker, rather than someone who is bashing a plank and is spitting all over a microphone.

I'm not trying to blow out a camera lens or make the audience's hair go straight back from my sheer volume, sheer energy level.

I would never put any growl on my voice in concert - it's not the kind of music I sing.

When I'm singing my songs on stage, I feel like I'm doing a rock show, even though I don't think all my music is particularly straight up rock.

I don't really enjoy singing lead.

Audiences are not interested in watching singers who stand stiffly and sing for three hours.

I think I've gradually learned to become more of a frontman than I was initially. I mean, when I first started, especially playing with Alter Bridge, you know, I really considered myself more a guitar player who sang.

As a performer, I want to hit the last row of the arena. I want to make big moves. I'm a spaz, naturally.

So much can be gained from watching other singers, seeing what they do and what they don't do, seeing how they look when they breathe, how wide they open their mouths for a high note.

When you sing opera you are very far from the people, you are onstage, and between you and the people there is the orchestra. So you have to launch your emotions very, very far. When you sing pop, you are singing very close - the microphone is very close to your mouth. You can whisper your emotions into the microphone.

What do you mean, I'm a wild front man! I'm jumping all over, I do the dance moves.

I don't have a rock voice. I have to force it. I am like an opera singer.

Daisy began to sing with the music in a husky, rhythmic whisper, bringing out a meaning in each word that it had never had before and would never have again. When the melody rose, her voice broke up sweetly, following it, in a way contralto voices have, and each change tipped out a little of her warm human magic upon the air.

I'd like to think I could physically manage doing that, but I don't think it feels authentic to the kind of performer that I am. I think that, for me, being stationary and just sort of singing the songs seems to be the most connected and authentic expression for me on stage.

I've dabbled in running around on stage, and at certain times it's nice to step away from the anchor of the piano and use a handheld microphone and connect with the audience, but I think my soul as a performer is just a little bit more connected to the instrument. To just sort of sit and sing - that feels like the most natural fit for me.

I studied with Stella Adler and I didn't like the representational aspect of most opera singers. Most of the opera singers had not a false, but over theatrical way of presenting.

In my first bands I was a singing guitar player, but if you heard any of those songs you wouldn't describe me as a singer. But I can make it work.

To the extreme I rock a mike like a vandal.

I knew that we had an obligation and that was to keep an energy in it and try to keep the audience interested. In fact, I asked some of the actors to take a look at His Girl Friday, a Howard Hawks film with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, because they talk over each other and there's a great energy.

People have their own reasons for dying. It might look simple, but it never is. It's just like a rock. What's above ground is only a small part of it. But if you start pulling, it keeps coming and coming. The human mind dwells deep in darkness. Only the person himself knows the real reason, and maybe not even then.

[Cole Porter] sang like a hinge.