Hozier Quotes

The best vocalists I can think of are female. There is no singer I can think of who can touch Ella Fitzgerald. And when Billie Holiday sings, she's merciless about it. Her voice has just this immaculate sadness - even in happy songs, there was something that was so broken about it.

The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.

When Billie Holiday sings a song, I hear the song, but I always hear her and her truth.

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.

Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time' was a perfect song. It was so beautiful and so heartfelt. Her vocals were so amazing. And, for me, that was a song I went to when I was feeling sad and wanted to feel even sadder.

I have a fondness for jazz, particularly for jazz singers, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald all the way through the Sinatra era.

I had no desire to become a singer until I heard Billie Holiday. The first time I heard her on a record, it was a revelation. She sounded like a woman singing about herself.

But once you strip that down, you realize it's all about a voice, like a Norah Jones - that's inspiring to me.

No one in the world can beat Ella Fitzgerald as a riff singer.

Listening to Nat Cole prompted me to sing sentimental songs with distinct diction.

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.

If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.

I just used to love the sound of especially a female vocal like Ella Fitzgerald for example, it's just that empowering self-control that can make a whole room go silent. I fell in love with that sound.

I think I copied my style from Louis Armstrong. Because I used to like the big volume and the big sound that Bessie Smith got when she sang ... So I liked the feeling that Louis got and I wanted the big volume that Bessie Smith got. But I found that it didn't work with me, because I didn't have a big voice. So anyway between the two of them I sorta got Billie Holiday.

I'm not necessarily a happy singer. That's not who I am as an artist.

I try to create something that draws you in without overthinking it. Something that resonates with you automatically that you don't have to think about. That's what the best pop is about: Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Nirvana - these guys made some of the most authentic and popular music.

Cacie Dalager's voice is beautiful, and her lyrics break my heart.

I studied and sang lot of jazz when I was growing up. I think that plays a little bit into some of the things I do vocally, notes that I pick in chords.

I don't have any problem with being the guy whose album people put on when they're feeling sad.

When I make music I try to be as honest as I can to how I experience the world. Like how you arrange a piece of music formally. I tend to observe a lot of chaos or whatever, the fragmentation and melancholy. That's the filter I synthesize my world view with. If I didn't formally have that chaos and it was really linear, it would make my skin crawl.

One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.

If you don't have any Coltrane, 'A Love Supreme' will do it for you. It will explain everything. Even if you don't get it, it will still explain everything. That's how deep it is.

I just like a good, sad song. The sadder, the better. It moves me.

I'm a blues guy at heart, so silly music isn't generally what I do. I'm a I'll-cry-as-my-guitar-gently-weeps kind of guy.