Janis Joplin Quotes

I studied other singers, so I would learn how to phrase, and learn how to breathe. And the main thing was, I learned how to inhabit my song.

I wanted to be Whitney Houston at first, and when I started taking voice lessons, my voice teacher kind of geared me more towards opera.

I learned how to be more theatrical and have more fun, and to take a song and sing it over and over again in different ways, and make it different each time. I'm not just singing the song - it's this thing that's affecting me.

I'm a fan of Otis Redding. I've sat around trying to copy some of his phrasing and learn from him, but it kinda falls short.

I started learning everybody's riffs, from Donny Hathaway to Jeffrey Osborne to James Ingram. That helped me create my own style of singing.

When I was 14, I heard Otis Redding in a club local to me, and I was blown away. It leaped out at me and went straight to my heart. I set my sights on singing like that.

I learned a lot from Jimmie Rodgers when I started trying to yodel.

Exene taught me how to bend my notes when I sing. That's her style. And I learned that from her.

The basis of everything I do is down to the song. If I don't have the song I don't sing, and if I don't sing I don't perform.

When I sing, it's different from when I speak in a very interesting way. I think that, when you're singing, a message is carried in a different way. I don't know if that emotion needs a melody.

For me, learning how to sing was just like learning how to speak.

Singers like Gladys Knight are mostly responsible for how I learned to sing.

That was how I had developed my singing style in the first place - imitating other singers like George Michael and Richard Marx.

I'm thinking, I'm singing like Ozzy Osbourne, but I don't sound like him enough, ever.

I approach the singing kind of like with dialect thoughts in my mind. I have to sound like this on certain things to give that Frankie Valli flavor.

For me, singing was always about the lyrics. I'm hopeless at singing songs that don't have a core.

There's so much more subtlety to this new recording. There's a subtlety in the playing. There's also a subtlety in the way I approached the singing. The band was able to really capture the feeling of the songs and not really trade anything that we had sort of arranged for the live presentation, but the songs just aren't as loud.

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.

You don't have to be doing vocal acrobatics or singing all over the scale to have soul.

Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension.

When the human being sings he lends expression to the great wise ways in which the world was made.

When I started out playing guitar and singing, I was about twelve, going on thirteen. The role models for me back then were the folk singers. They all had these high, really nice voices and ranges, like Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and then later, of course, Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt. I decided early on that I was going to learn how to write songs really, really well, because I didn't want to have to compete as a singer. I didn't feel that it was my strong point.

My voice is my instrument. ... It is not in the throat, from where it appears to come. It is in my feet and how they touch the floor, in my legs and how they lift and sink with the rhythm of the song. It is in my hips and belly and lower back.

I've been working a lot on figuring out how to sing differently and better. I want to become a better singer. I want to sing out more. I want to me more extroverted, vocally.

True singing is a different breath, about nothing.