I listened to everything. To the early Motown groups - the Four Tops and the Temptations - to Johnny Mathis, Gloria Lynne - my sisters loved her. Sarah Vaughan. Everything.
I love - you know, I'm a big fan of Prince and Curtis Mayfield and Smoky Robinson. It's something to be said about a man who can be very masculine but still display that sensitive side, and that falsetto does it perfectly.
My inspiration is R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Prince - for the vocals, anyway.
Growing up, I loved Boy George, George Michael, Annie Lennox, Queen, Freddie Mercury, Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross.
I discovered later in life that there's not that many men with a counter-tenor vocal ability.
I really like female singers; I've got zero interest in working with male singers. Any male voice I need to do, I can do.
The male singers who had the same range I did, when I was growing up, didn't do much for me. But put on Nina Simone, Carmen McRae or Nancy Wilson, and I'd be in seventh heaven. Female vocalists just did more with their voices, and that's why I paid more attention to them.
I've listened to female vocalists my whole life. That's what I love. I still listen to guys' vocals and don't get taken aback a lot.
Me and my brothers decided to form a group called T.G.T. - Tyrese, Ginuwine and Tank.
I'm under no illusion. There are lots of male singers out there with raspy voices.
Nowadays in pop, there's not a lot of men that are singing big and loud and high - it's not as common as it once was.
I'm a baritone. Baritones don't mature until late.
I prefer to listen to a lot of male singers rather than females. Sometimes I find it a bit too shrill. I even find my own voice a bit too high.
My dad was a huge country music fan, but he also had a band and he sang. So he'd listen to a lot of music and the songs that he'd learn for the band were more from the male artists. So my earliest country memories were Waylon Jennings, Conway Twitty, George Jones, Johnny Paycheck even.
I actually prefer female voices to listen to, mostly, but among the male singers whose voices I like are Jeff Buckley, Art Garfunkel, that sort of voice. Contemporary crooners rather than rockers.
Men have a lot less to write about, unless you're somebody like Tom Waits or John Lennon. And the female voice is much more suited to melody. Men have this barky thing - we're domesticated apes with a microphone.
There's a lot of female singers and I don't want to dismiss them, but the male - and I have to be careful - the black male voice in jazz, whatever you say, is an important voice, because there's a tradition of the music that should be touched on, there's a sound that should be touched on.
I love singing some Johnny Cash, which is interesting because it's in a guy's key; I love singing Elvis Presley.
I think Elvis Presley is a crooner. Even people like Eddie Vedder, I hear him sing some things and I go "wow". Seal, that kind of nice voice, too.
As far as Indian artists are concerned, I really like Mohammad Rafi and Sonu Nigam.
