Cheyenne Jackson Quotes

Elton John is a huge influence and an artist I've listened to since I was a little girl.

I love every song that I did with Pancham and Gulzarbhai.

It's more in retrospect as I've thought about it over the years and look back at what I wrote, how I wrote things - like there's a song that Ralph Stanley later recorded with me that he had guested on my record what was called "Travelers Lantern" that I wrote as basically, you know, a hymn.

Sometimes I'll write a song first and then I'm like, "Oh this person will be great on this song." But there are some artists I know what want, like off the top I knew I wanted Brandy and Faith Evans. Their music is like the soundtrack to my life, so it was a personal thing for me. So once they said yes, I wrote songs specifically for them.

I also tried to focus on songs that Billie Holiday wrote, songs that she had a hand in shaping, like "Strange Fruit"; songs that were written for her or songs that she wrote herself, like "Fine and Mellow" or "God Bless The Child."

I started writing songs after I heard Hank Williams.

It was a great thrill just to know Roy Orbison, so to play, sing, write hit songs with him and have him in The Traveling Wilburys was beyond my wildest dreams!

He is irreplaceable. Even in death I have no doubt that Johnny Cash will continue to live on as an inspiration to musicians and songwriters and all of America.

I want my music, whether it's sung by other people or sung by myself, to affect the way the Top 40 radio sounds. I want to heavily influence it with things that have come directly from my brain.

I sure wish I'd written 'One' by U2.

You know, 'Paid in Full' is a classic album, man. It kind of got me to where I am now, so I can never get tired of 'Paid in Full.'

Fans be reflecting the way I be making music.

We have Common on one song called 'Don't Charge Me With the Crime,' which is one of my favorite songs. It's a story song. It didn't really happen to us. But it's definitely fun to have him on the track.

One of my biggest influences is Mac Miller, so to follow in his footsteps would be incredible. He's definitely a big inspiration to me.

I think... people are inspired by our music, and that's cool. We all borrow each other's music.

John Mayer will be around forever, like the Eagles and Eric Clapton.

At 82, Nelson (who wrote the song "On the Road Again," among a thousand or more others) is the elder statesman of country music, a steadying and powerful voice in the industry and on environmental issues, and he's still on the road much of the year. The music keeps calling.

I have to say I owe my career to the master composers of the Great American Songbook who have written such high-quality songs - the best popular music ever composed.

I remember Elvis as a young man hanging around the Sun Studios. Even then, I knew this kid had a tremendous talent. He was a dynamic young boy. His phraseology, his way of looking at a song, was as unique as Sinatra's. I was a tremendous fan, and had Elvis lived, there would have been no end to his inventiveness.

I'd love to try and teach Donald Trump how to write a song. I'd love to put him in a room with another person - someone who's protesting him at the Women's March. I'd put the three of us in a room and all write a song together. If that can happen, it proves we can get over our differences.

I called the guys from Promise of the Real, whom I've been playing with, and they were all on the road. Right after I hung up the phone, I wrote another song and started writing another, and I'm going, "Hey, I can't wait. I should be doing this now!" My experience tells me that when it's there, it's there, and you can't make it wait. So I got Jimmy Keltner and Paul Bushnell, two good guys, and went in and did this record ["Peace Trail"].

Alice and I, we'd met before, but we were able to kind of sit and chat on the set of Dark Shadows, and talk about maybe writing some songs together. We started doing that, and then one thing led to another and it became this Vampire project - because he was telling stories about all those days, which were fascinating.

If I'm not writing about myself, then I sit down with people I really dig writing with and throw 'em out and see if something sticks. Their brain plus mine hopefully will make something interesting and cool and it will just snowball and we'll have a unique song by the end of it.

My favorite song is Eminem's 'Rap God.' That joint is just incredible, It's six-and-a-half minutes of him just crushing the whole game. It's so different from what I hear if I listen to the radio.