Gladys Knight Quotes

I think I'm a soulful singer.

I've felt emotions onstage that I never felt before; it has strengthened me as a person and as an artist.

I think older people can appreciate my music because I really show my heart when I sing, and it's not corny. I think I can grow as an artist, and my fans will grow with me.

I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.

Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin. Now, they are so subtle, they can milk you with two notes. They can make you feel like they told you the whole universe. But I don't know that yet. All I got now is strength. Maybe if I keep singing, maybe I'll get it.

There's just more emotion and raw feeling in Baltimore music. It can't be copied.

As my guitar playing dwindled, something else in my music got better.

Playing '10,000 Days' in concert was very challenging but infinitely rewarding. It's much more sensitive and emotional than our other songs, and it requires pacing yourself and also being very vulnerable.

Some people are just gifted with a great voice, other people are gifted with great emotion, other people are gifted with great engagement - when you find all of those things in one package, you have Taylor Swift.

I always imagined having so much energy on stage, versus me being somewhat chill, soulful R&B.

My music's matured so much, I don't have to create any barriers.

Just trying to make my music as good as possible and to keep performing and just keep moving.

I play very, very emotional. That's just my style.

As long as we keep learning new music and getting better musically, there's a good chance that the record deal won't change anything.

I always, at least back then, struggled with emotion in writing. I felt like I could do odd, unusual things, but there wouldn't be enough feeling in them, and maybe if there's a progression at all to anything that I've done it's that I've always wanted to have a high - an almost overwhelming - degree of feeling in what I write.

Trouble is said to be good for an artist's soul but almost never is.

Well, you know, it's a younger person, and it was maybe an effort to be a little more sincere and adult about the lyrics occasionally, which is a good thing. It's nice that it's not too self-conscious like some of our lyrics could be.

I'm not a young man, and I can find intensity in a lot of different ways, sometimes without even raising my voice. When I was younger, it was all about how I need three extra sets of lungs to get enough wind to get out the thing at the screaming level I need to, because that's the way it needs to be. Now, I see that there's a whole lot of other colors on the palette.

I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived.

No flower of art ever fully blossomed save it was nourished by tears of agony.

I have no doubt that the music I release next will be better.

I'm not one of those artists who doubts that they made dope-ass records. From the first record to now, each record has gotten better. I started dope, so I've just gotten doper and doper and dopest and super dope.

The blues? Why, the blues are a part of me. They're like a chant. The blues are like spirituals, almost sacred. When we sing blues, we're singing out our hearts, we're singing out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt and just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues. When I sing, 'I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry -- Yes, I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry,'... what I'm doing is letting my soul out.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.